SECURITY AND PRIVACY ISSUES IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Today, cloud computing is defined and talked about across the ICT industry under different contexts and with different definitions attached to it. It is a new paradigm in the evolution of Information Technology, as it is one of the biggest revolutions in this field to have taken place in recent times. According to the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), “cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” [1]. The importance of Cloud Computing is increasing and it is receiving a growing attention in the scientific and industrial communities. A study by Gartner [2] considered Cloud Computing as the first among the top 10 most important technologies and with a better prospect in successive years by companies and organizations. Clouds bring out tremendous benefits for both individuals and enterprises. Clouds support economic savings, outsourcing mechanisms, resource sharing, any-where any-time accessibility, on-demand scalability, and service flexibility. Clouds minimize the need for user involvement by masking technical details such as software upgrades, licenses, and maintenance from its customers. Clouds could also offer better security advantages over individual server deployments. Since a cloud aggregates resources, cloud providers charter expert security personnel while typical companies could be limited with a network administrator who might not be well versed in cyber security issues. The new concepts introduced by the clouds, such as computation outsourcing, resource sharing, and external data warehousing, increase the security and privacy concerns and create new security challenges. Moreover, the large scale of the clouds, the proliferation of mobile access devices (e.g., Smartphone and tablets), and the direct access to cloud infrastructure amplify cloud vulnerabilities and threats. As clouds become more and more popular, security concerns grow bigger and bigger as they become more attractive attack targets due to the concentration of digital assets