SECURITY FEATURES OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Abstract

Cloud Computing is increasingly becoming popular as many enterprise applications and data are
moving into cloud platforms. However, a major barrier for cloud adoption is lack of security. In this paper, we
take a holistic view of cloud computing security – spanning across the possible issues and vulnerabilities
connected with software platform, identity management and access control, data integrity, confidentiality and
privacy, physical and process security aspects, and legal compliance in cloud. We present our findings from the
points of view of a cloud service provider, cloud consumer, and third-party authorities such as Govt. We also
discuss important research directions in cloud security in areas such as Trusted Computing, Information Centric
Security and Privacy Preserving Models. Finally, we sketch a set of steps that can be used, at a high level, to
assess security preparedness for a business application to be migrated to cloud.