21 April 2020

Research pick: Cloud insecurities - "A note on cloud computing security"

Writing in the International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, a team from India suggests that existing security algorithms cannot meet the needs of cloud computing. The team of Deepak Garg and Shalli Rani of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Chitkara University, and Jagpreet Sidhu of Jaypee University of Information Technology in Solan, India, provide an analytical approach to the problem that might help lead the way to a solution.

Cloud computing has been the “new” paradigm for many years now in delocalised, distributed, and shared services. It allows organisations and individuals to offload storage and computer processing requirements on to a third party, usually for a fee. There are many benefits, distributed servers, greater processing capacity, and more. The USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as follows: “It is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

The downside to cloud computing is that the user is ultimately dependent on a third party for the privacy and protection of any data they upload to the “cloud”. Unfortunately, there are so many disparate implementations in use that the research literature into cloud computing security is not a cohesive nor even coherent body of work that security specialists might turn to with a view to revealing the state-of-the-art exploring and filling loopholes in security.

The team’s analytical approach to the literature offers a way forward to clarifying the nature of cloud computing’s insecurities. It might, the team suggests, assist in finding a better understanding, of the patterns and trends, and other factors important to users, providers, and the information security community.

Garg, D., Sidhu, J. and Rani, S. (2020) ‘A note on cloud computing security’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp.133–154.

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