Analysis of Data Cloud Computing Security Problem - Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Survey on Security Challenges in Cloud Computing. Answer: Introduction: Cloud computing can be defined as the paradigm of information technology, which helps to enable ubiquitous accessing to all types of system resources that are configurable on the Internet (Dinh et al. 2013). Moreover, the services that are of higher level could be easily and frequently provisioned with minimum managerial effort. Cloud computing solely relies on the sharing of various resources for properly achieving the economies of scale and coherence. The third-party clouds enable all the companies for focusing on the core businesses and not spending resources on the computer maintenance and infrastructure (Arora, Parashar and Transforming 2013). Cloud computing helps the organizations to reduce the costs related to IT infrastructure. Cloud computing is completely different from the traditional IT servicing. The main difference is that cloud computing is extremely elastic and resilient, whereas both advantages are absent in traditional IT systems. The second important difference is that cloud is flexible as well as scalable; however, no such feature is present in traditional IT systems. The other differences include cost effectiveness, high security and office automation; all these features are not available in traditional IT systems. The following report outlines a brief discussion regarding the entire concept of cloud computing. This report clearly depicts the description on the various cloud service models. Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS, Platform as a Service or PaaS and Software as a Service or SaaS. The two important issues related to Nectar Cloud and Oracle Cloud is also provided in report. The misconceptions related to cloud computing are discussed here. The final part of the assignment concludes with a description on the several benefits and challenges of cloud computing. Cloud Computing Model Cloud computing mainly comprises of three distinct service-oriented architecture models. They are as follows: Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS mainly refers to any type of online service, which gives the higher-level APIs that are, utilized to deference several lower level details of the infrastructure of underlying network (Garg, Versteeg and Buyya 2013). These details mainly include the location, data security, physical computing resources, data backup, data scaling, data partitioning and many more. Iaas is a virtualized infrastructure that helps all its users for executing any type of operation on that infrastructure. The hypervisors like the Oracle VM, VMware ESX and Oracle VirtualBox run this virtual machine as guest. Infrastructure as a Service can also be defined as the capability given to a client for provisioning processing, networks, storage and all other significant computing resources (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). Here the client could easily deploy as well as run any arbitrary software that could involve all applications and operating systems. The providers of the IaaS cloud properly supply all the resources on the demand from the larger equipment pools that are installed in the data centres. In the wide area connectivity, the clients of cloud computing can either utilize the Internet connection or the carrier clouds that are the dedicated VPNS or virtual private networks. For the successful deployment of these applications, the clients of cloud install images of operating system and the application software over the infrastructure of cloud. Within the cloud service model of infrastructure as a service, the client of cloud patches as well as maintains the application software and the operating systems (Hashizume et al. 2013). The main advantages of the infrastructure as a service or IaaS include flexibility, scalability, high security and easy maintenance. The only important disadvantage of this particular model is that it is extremely expensive and thus all organizations or enterprises could not afford this virtualized infrastructure. The best examples of infrastructure as a service or IaaS are the Amazon Web Services or AWS, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, Google Compute Engine or GCE and Digital Ocean. Platform as a Service or PaaS: The second type of cloud service model is the Platform as a Service or PaaS. It is the specific platform-based service that gives a platform to its users for the purpose of developing, running and managing various applications without any type of complexity of maintaining infrastructure that is associated with the development and launching of an application. The cloud service model could be delivered in three distinct methods. The first method is as the service of public cloud from any provider, where the client could control the software deployment with less configuration options (Yang and Jia 2013). The cloud provider gives various servers, networks, operating system, storage, database, middleware or any other service for hosting the application of a client. The second method is as the service of private cloud within the firewall. This private service can either be an application or software. The third or the final method is as the hybrid Cloud that is to be deployed on any public IaaS or private Iaas as a service. The main objective of this platform as a service is that it provides the typical environment for its users and developers for creating, hosting and deploying applications (Herbst, Kounev and Reussner 2013). This eventually saves the developers or the users from extra infrastructure costs and complexities. The most significant advantages of this model of platform as a service or PaaS mainly include cost effectiveness, flexibility, scalability, easy accessibility and easy implementation. The only important disadvantage of this model is that it does not provide any type of security. Due to this lack of security, many organizations could not think of implementing this model (Wei et al. 2014). The best examples of this cloud model of platform as a service or PaaS are AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Force.com, Heroku, Google App Engine and Apache Stratos. Software as a Service or SaaS: Software as a Service or SaaS is the software licensing model or software delivery model where the software is usually licensed on the basis of subscription and is also centrally hosted (Rong, Nguyen and Jaatun 2013). The other name of the software as a service is on demand software and was also referred by Microsoft as software plus services. This cloud service model is usually accessed by the clients by utilizing a web browser or a thin client. It has become the most common model of delivery for all the business applications like messaging software, office software, DBMS software, CAD software, payroll processing software, management information system or MIS, customer relationship management or CRM, development software, accounting collaboration, enterprise resource planning or ERP, CAD software, talent acquisition, human resource management or HRM, virtualization and many more. The main advantage of SaaS is that it is cost effective and thus could be afforded by all organizations. The utilization of this service model is extremely broad. While all the initial ASP are focused on the management and hosting of third party independent software vendor, the SaaS vendors development as well as the management of the software. The traditional client server applications majorly require the software installation on the personal computers of the client which are not required here. The most significant advantages or benefits of this software as a service or SaaS are cost effectiveness, elasticity, flexibility, scalability and easy implementation. The only issue with this service model is that security is absent. Thus, data is insecure in SaaS (Almorsy, Grundy and Mller 2016). The examples of software as a service or SaaS are the Google Apps, Cisco WebEx, Salesforce, Concur, Workday and Citrix GoToMeeting. Cloud Services by Oracle Cloud: Oracle Cloud is the typical cloud computing service that is being offered by the Oracle Corporation by providing storage, networks, servers, services and applications via a series of global networked data centres that are managed by Oracle Corporation (Cloud.oracle.com. 2018). This organization enables all of these services that are to be provisioned on the Internet. Four types of services are provided by the organization of Oracle Cloud. They are the Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS, Platform as a Service or PaaS, Software as a Service or SaaS and Data as a Service or DaaS. These four types of cloud services are utilized for building, deploying, integrating as well as extending various applications on the cloud. The platform is supposed to support several open standards like SQL, REST and HTML5, open source solutions like Hadoop and Kafka and a vast series of databases, frameworks, tools and programming languages. Amongst the four cloud services provided by Oracle Cloud Viz. Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS, Platform as a Service or PaaS, Software as a Service or SaaS and Data as a Service or DaaS, the Platform as a Service (Paas) could be directly utilized for the purpose of deployment of Java EE applications (Cloud.oracle.com. 2018). It is solely done by the PaaS Extension Control by utilizing the Java Cloud Services. The other three cloud services model, i.e. IaaS, SaaS and DaaS cannot be utilized for the purpose of deploying Java EE applications. Nectar Cloud provides scalable as well as flexible power of computing to all of its users, who have computing infrastructure, services and software or storing, accessing and even running data autonomously and rapidly (Nectar Cloud. 2018). The self-service structure of the Nectar Cloud solely helps to allow effective, efficient and fast data access and a strong platform to collaborate with others. Three types of cloud services are provided by Nectar Cloud. They are the Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS, Platform as a Service or PaaS, and Software as a Service or SaaS. For the successful deployment of Java EE applications, the module should be developed and assembled (Nectar Cloud. 2018). Next, the target server or the cluster is needed to be configured. Before deploying anything, it should be ensured that the target vision is significantly compatible with the module selected for Java EE applications deployment. Misconceptions on Cloud Computing: Cloud computing is extremely useful and significant method of transferring any information or data through the Internet. It is being utilized by several popular multinational companies worldwide. However, still few organizations; do not want to take up cloud for their business as they have several misconceptions about cloud. This is the most important and popular misconception about cloud computing. People think that cloud is riskier. There is a conception that cloud means that all the files or data are floating around the world without security. This is absolutely wrong as cloud is the representation of Internet that has the access to the programs and data (Avram 2014). An amazing backup plan is also present within the cloud; so that if any problem occurs, the data could be easily retrieved. When the information is stored virtually, the connection between the office networks and devices are broken. Thus, cloud is responsible for saving from physical emergencies or physical disasters. Thus, cloud is not at all riskier and rather it helps to store and secure the data properly. This is the second misconception regarding cloud computing. Although switching to cloud, sometimes increases the migration costs or installation costs, it saves money in the longer run. Cloud computing is utilized for the reduction of IT infrastructure management costs (Khan et al. 2013). The most significant advantage of cloud computing is that it takes up annual expenses and within that anything related to the services are incorporated. Therefore, no extra cost is incurred. Thus, it is myth and cloud computing does not incur huge costs. Another important misconception about cloud computing is the not increment in security. It is considered that cloud cannot provide extra security to any building or place (Hashizume et al. 2013). However, with the extra layers of encryption and behaviour based key management servers, an additional layer of protection is supplied by the cloud. Thus making the object more secured. The fourth significant misconception about cloud computing is that cloud is extremely unreliable and thus could not be trusted at all. This is absolutely wrong as cloud is extremely reliable and secured and can be easily utilized by all organizations (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). The data could be easily backed up to various locations or services, thus, giving an extra layer of protection. The fifth popular misconception regarding cloud computing is that it is considered that cloud is only a trend. All the organizations, which rely on various web applications like Amazon, Gmail and Dropbox solely utilizes and relies on the cloud computing (Dinh et al. 2013). Cloud migration has become extremely popular for all organizations and thus this is not just a trend. It is extremely flexible and could be easily customized in every business. Conclusion Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that cloud computing is the safest mode of transferring any type of data or information through the Internet without any type of complexities. It helps to deliver the hosted services on the Internet. It enables the organizations in consuming the computing resources like a virtual machine or VM, storing or even applying and not to build or maintain the computing infrastructures. Cloud computing comprise of various significant benefits for its users. The most significant advantage of cloud computing is that it helps in self service provisioning. The second important benefit is the high elasticity. The organizations could scale up as the computing requirements increase as well as decrease when the demands go gown. Thus, the need for the huge investments in the infrastructure is eliminated. The third important advantage of cloud computing is that it could be easily migrated and thus is easily utilized by most of the organizations. Moreover, it is workload resilience and therefore the workload of the users are always kept running. However, in spite of having significant advantages, there are few disadvantages that make cloud computing extremely difficult to be implemented by everyone. The first and the most important disadvantage of cloud is the downtime. There is no immunity to the service outages. It is completely dependent on the Internet connection. The second disadvantage of the cloud computing is the lack of security and privacy. There is always a high chance the data would be lost with this particular technology. The other disadvantages of cloud computing mainly include it is extremely vulnerable to attacks and comprise of limited control and limited flexibilities. The above report has clearly demonstrated the clear idea about cloud definition and various cloud service models. The problems with the Oracle Cloud and Nectar cloud are also given here. Moreover, the several misconceptions are also cleared in this particular report. References: Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Mller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security problem.arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107. Arora, R., Parashar, A. and Transforming, C.C.I., 2013. Secure user data in cloud computing using encryption algorithms.International journal of engineering research and applications,3(4), pp.1922-1926. Avram, M.G., 2014. Advantages and challenges of adopting cloud computing from an enterprise perspective.Procedia Technology,12, pp.529-534. Cloud.oracle.com. 2018.Enterprise Cloud Computing SaaS, PaaS, IaaS | Oracle Cloud. [online] Available at: https://cloud.oracle.com/home [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018]. Dinh, H.T., Lee, C., Niyato, D. and Wang, P., 2013. 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