Cloud Computing as a backup storage in organisations

(image from computerhope.com)

Cloud computing is becoming an emerging technology in many organizations especially those who require extra resources (i.e., processing power and storage) with a lower cost. Recently, the adoption of cloud services within the organization raises a significant security concerns among data owners when the data stored in the cloud are sensitive data to the public or shared environment. For example, the customer details are considered as sensitive data to the company and the data owner. The leakage of sensitive information will compromise the individual privacy and allows the competitors to gain the competitive advantages. Therefore, user authentication for cloud computing is becoming important and need to be addressed when considering sensitive data.

Cloud computing provides a measurable online environment which enhances and increase the ability to handle an increased volume of work without impacting on the performance of the system. Cloud computing also offers significant computing capability and economy of scale that might not otherwise be affordable to businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that may not have the financial and human resources to invest in IT infrastructure.
Benefits of Cloud Computing are so numerous, it is so good for individuals, organizations etc than hardware storage which may lead to lost of data by threat or virus. The benefits are listed below:

1. Increase or Expand scalability: this is when the IT staff can quickly meet changing user loads without having to engineer for peak loads.
2. Lower infrastructure costs that is does not require file or hardware. It also enables enterprises to eliminate capital expenditures and consume resources as a service, paying only for what they use.a
3. Increase utilization that is by sharing computing power between multiple clients.
4. Improve end user productivity: user can access system with cloud computing, regardless of their location or what device they are using.
5. Improve reliability: Cloud computing may cost effectively provide multiple redundant sites, facilitating business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios.
6. It Gain access to more sophisticated applications: external clouds can offer customer relationship management and other advanced tools that were previously out of reach for many businesses with smaller IT budgets
7. Downsize the IT department: by moving application out to a cloud, IT department can reduce the number of application administrator needed for deployment, maintenance and updates.
8. Increase security
9. It saves energy: Clouds help IT organizations to reduce power, cooling and space usage to help the enterprise create environmentally responsible data centers.

Although with all these benefits of cloud computing, it is targeted to provide better utilization of resources using virtualization techniques and to take up much of the work load from the client, it is fraught with security risks. There are many security aspects to focus in cloud computing when using it.

1. Availability, that is to ensure its user can use them at any time, at any place.
2. Data Integrity, that is to preserve information integrity i.e not lost or modified by unauthorized user.
3. Identity and Access Management
4. Control: in the cloud system, control regulates the use of the system, including the applications, its infrastructure and the data.
5. Audit: It means to watch what happened in the cloud system.
6. Confidentiality: it means keeping users data secret in the cloud systems
7. Compliance
8. Privacy

The threats of security in Cloud computing
Cloud computing is an emerging technology with shared resources and lower cost that relies on pay per use according to the user demand. Though its has many characteristics, it may face lots of threats and problems in the scopes of security. These threats are as follows :

1. Abusive and villianous use of cloud computing
2. Malicious insiders
3. Insecure Application Programming Interfaces
4. Shared Technology Vulnerability
5. Data Loss or Leakage
6. Account service and Traffic Hijacking
7. Compromised service
8. Regulatory Compliance
9. Security Issues in Virtualization
10. Application Security
11. Identity Management

Put your data and information saves in the cloud. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing service over the Internet.
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