Advantages of Cloud security | disadvantages of Cloud security
This page covers advantages and disadvantages of Cloud security and its basics. It mentions benefits or advantages of Cloud security and drawbacks or disadvantages of Cloud security.
What is Cloud security?
Introduction:
The cloud computing model consists of two parts viz. cloud service provider and end users.
There are three deployment models i.e. public, private and hybrid.
The cloud services delivery models are SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.
When business enterprises move their computing environments with their identities, information and infrastructure to the cloud, they will compromise some level of control. This leads to security threats. It has become essential to have security assurances from cloud provider and also to have secured processes and events.
The cloud security principles comprise three categories viz. identity, information and infrastructure. Some of the security concerns are loss of data, account seizing, service traffic hindrance and vulnerable APIs.
The solution for cloud security should provide protection from theft, leakage and deletion by adopting security policies.
The cloud infrastructure should be secure irrespective of the deployment model (i.e. public or private) and whether the service is SaaS, PaaS or IaaS >>. Here SaaS refers to Software as a Service, PaaS refers to Platform as a Service and IaaS refers to Infrastructure as a Service.
The figure depicts shared responsibility model of cloud security. Here it is the joint responsibility of users and cloud providers to deliver secured cloud computing model. Infrastructure security can be viewed, assessed and implemented according to its building levels such as network, host and application levels. In the figure-2, "YOU" stands for Customer or user where as "CSP" stands for Cloud Service Provider. It shows various resources (e.g. data, applications, OS, networks, servers, storage etc.) and their responsibility map.
• The network level security ensures confidentiality and integrity of data in transit to/from public cloud provider. It also ensures proper
access control.
• The host level security considers deployment model (i.e. public, private or hybrid) and cloud services delivery models (SaaS, PaaS or IaaS).
At PaaS and SaaS, operating system is hidden from end users. IaaS customers will have potential threat on hypervisors.
• Application level security depends on single user app or multi user app.
• Data security includes data privacy, data protection, data availability, data location and its secure transmission.
The data security can be achieved through identity management, encryption and access control. IAM (Identity and Access Management) is branch
of cloud security which allows legitimate persons to retrieve legitimate resources at the legitimate time for legitimate reasons.
Benefits or advantages of Cloud security
Following are the benefits or advantages of Cloud security:
➨Automatic backup : Users need to choose saving interval of the data in cloud storage.
➨Solution from hardware failure : There is redundancy planned for hardware resources and
malfunctions are resolved by qualified personnel from cloud provider side. Hence users
need not have to worry about such failures.
➨Client's virtual environment : In IaaS and PaaS level, user must guarantee the security of
data where as in SaaS , cloud provider ensures guarantee of the security. Cloud provider takes
care of security at their level such as isolation of user networks, admin registration, backups etc.
➨Agreement documents such as SLA and NDA, determines how and what access of client's
data provider can get. Depending upon situations or scenarios, penalties are applied.
Drawbacks or disadvantages of Cloud security
Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of Cloud security:
➨Physical resources are shared among multiple customers. If a user commits some illegal
actions or issues such commands it leads to system crash or loss of data or information.
Hence all the users of the same cloud storage will be affected.
➨All the interactions of users with the cloud use internet channels which is not secured.
Hence it leads to interception of web session or stealing of passwords and so on. In order to
avoid such risks, secure connections must be available from your computer to provider's data center.
➨Sometimes users may experience drop in performance or inaccessibility
of services or limited available resources.
This is caused by various reasons such as heavy loads or poor planning or errors in resource
allocation mechanism etc.
➨Economic impact of a DoS attack
➨The main source of threats to IT systems are not hackers or malwares but
the employees themselves. The leaks can be due to unintentional, erroneous actions and
often deliberate wrecking by staff.
Also refer advantages of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and disadvantages of IaaS , PaaS and SaaS.
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