Why Cloud Security Is Such An Urgent And Growing Priority

Organizations use the Cloud in a variety of different service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) and deployment models (Private, Public, Hybrid). There are a number of security issues/concerns associated with cloud computing but these issues fall into two broad categories: Security issues faced by cloud providers (organizations providing software-, platform-, or infrastructure-as-a-service via the cloud) and security issues faced by their customers.In most cases, the provider must ensure that their infrastructure is secure and that their clients’ data and applications are protected while the customer must ensure that the provider has taken the proper security measures to protect their information.

In order to limit exposure, IT administrators should monitor outbound network traffic. When the amount of traffic deviates from normal usage or the number of outbound connections spikes, IT administrators will immediately notice. There are advanced security programs to monitor this, but visually confirming network traffic will prevent sensitive information from being accessed or stolen. Be sure to benchmark and document normal operating statistics.

Banner by Ellucian, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is widely used by many higher education institutions in the world today. Known to be the leading ERP system in higher education, Ellucian develops security plans for each institution that establishes procedural protection for their highly sensitive database that stores critical personnel and students account information. In order to effectively secure this sensitive information, it is recommended that the institution’s IT Department enforces the highest level of tiered defense in depth security measures to ensure and maintain data confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data. Lack of proper security measures can result in data vulnerabilities that will reap great distress on the institution along with its students, faculty and staff.

Train employees on security computer programing on how to detect spyware on their systems. Also do a security scan of the network for possible threats of attacks. Monitor outbound traffic of their networks connections to see if it deviates from normal operations. Keeping operating systems updated can make it hard for someone on the outside to breach the databases for intentional and unintentional access.

Computers are susceptible to many different attack forms when not properly monitored and protected. Hackers use many different methods to infect your system. Trojans, a type of virus, is one of the most common ways that hackers use to gain access to your system. Trojan viruses are named after the Trojan horse in the Latin epic poem The Aeneid. In this story the Greeks built a giant wooden horse as an apology to the people of troy. Little did the people of Troy know, a large number of soldiers were hiding inside. When the people of troy took the horse inside their castle, the soldiers obliterated the city. This same method is used with viruses. A user downloads a program or piece of software that they need, but harmful code is hidden inside the program. Let’s say I downloaded a game from the internet that had a Trojan horse inside of it. The game may actually run and function fully, however, it could be secretly logging my keystrokes or back-dooring my computer. The term backdoor is a process of bypassing authentication into a system, creating a remote connection, and allowing remote access or control from the hacker, all while remaining undetected. When a hacker has your computer back-doored it is possible for them to do anything they want as if they were right there in front of your computer. Hackers, when they successfully have gained access to your computer, often install keyloggers. A keylogger is the process of logging or recording what

Insider attacks are one of the leading causes of data breaches and it remains one of the hardest to protect against. Given the amount of computer and internet usage in most modern companies, Information Security is a fast growing industry. There are a number of ways a company 's network could be compromised. However, one of the leading threats a company faces is the threat of an insider attack. This paper will focus on understanding what insider attack is and the different types of attacks. As well as, giving steps that can be taken to reduce a company 's vulnerability to insider attack.

Designing and implementing an enterprise security plan can be a daunting task for any business. To help facilitate this endeavor, there is a need of manageable process and checklist that can be used by enterprise security, compliance, and IT professionals as a framework for crafting a successful cloud computing security plan.

The high regard to cloud computing is on the rise due to its ability to improve flexibility, expand access to data, and lower costs. Cloud computing release organizations from being required to have their hardware and software infrastructure from being acquired and maintained (Holt, Niebuhr, Aichberger, & Rosiello, 2011). On the other hand, while there is much noise being made about the benefits of cloud computing, questions have been brought up with respect to whether cloud computing is safe especially when it comes to its privacy, security, and reliability. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the different general controls and audit approaches for software and architecture, cloud computing, service-oriented architecture, and virtualization. This paper gives a summary analysis of the recent research that is available. Additionally, risks and vulnerabilities associated with public clouds, private clouds, and hybrids have also been researched. Within the research conducted, there are important examples provided. Recommendations are shown on how organizations could implement and mitigate these risks and vulnerabilities. This paper even outlines a list of IT audit tasks that focuses on a cloud computing environment due to the results of the analysis, the risks and vulnerabilities, and the mitigation controls.

Specialists instead of personnel: Because of financial capabilities of cloud based providers, they offer a specialist, not just a personnel.

The scope of this paper will revolve around the minor to severe level of informational security threats post by employees. The paper will assess data theft techniques, rogue employees and analyze the risks, which are involved related to technology used by the employees. The paper will discuss many terms and techniques without going into so much technical details. The plans and

Over the past several years the term cloud computing has become common in homes and organizations alike. Cloud computing can be defined as a pooled set of computing resources that are furnished via the internet. There are three types of cloud services typically available, these services are Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Organizations can benefit greatly from cloud services because they eliminate the need to buy and manage physical resources. Although such an action cuts cost it leaves organization victim to the vulnerabilities and threats that exist in cloud computing. Throughout this paper I will discuss the vulnerabilities and threats that come

To mitigate this kind of risk, firewalls should be implemented in the system at the right places. Firewalls prevent unauthorized access of data. Rules and policies should be configured to protect the session keys. To increase the awareness among employees, a proper training should be given to them. For example, session monitoring should

C RYPTOGRAPHY T ECHNIQUES The cloud service providers should address the still open cloud security problems in order to encourage users to use this technology. The most important concerns are confidentiality, integrity and availability. In a complex and non-transparent system like cloud computing, it is difficult for a user to even determine what kind of security measures are implemented in the cloud. This section presents Cryptography, as one of the security measure that can be implemented.

Usage of remote servers via internet to store, manage and process data instead of using a personal computer is known as Cloud computing. It’s a set of Information Technology services with the ability to scale up or down their service requirements. Most of the cloud services are provided by a third party service provider. In cloud computing, organizations can utilize IT services without in advance investment. Despite its benefits obtained from the cloud computing, the organizations are slow in accepting it due to security issues and challenges. Security is one of the major problems which hinder the growth of cloud. It’s not wise to handing over the important data to another company; such that clients need to be vigilant in understanding the risks of data infringement in this new environment. This paper discusses a detailed analysis of the cloud computing security issues and challenges. (Ayoleke)

In order to overcome the security problems faced by cloud computing a new technology known as Homomorphic encryption is being put to use. It is a type of encryption that allows all the computational process to be made available to carry on cryptographic which is one on a plain text using an algorithm. This is one of the most improved and effective technique used in today’s architecture that is related to communication systems. This encryption combined all the different services that are needed together without letting out the data to any of these services. This homomorphic encryption data can be transferred into cryptographic encryption by altering the design. This change allows their encryption to be used in cloud computing