CLOUD COMPUTING Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

CLOUD COMPUTING - Essay Example However, the issue of cloud security is the main focus for the various cloud computing potential customers and it is also considered the major barrier to most of its widespread applications (Patrick, 2013). This research paper will focus on current research done on cloud security. The main focus of the paper will be to survey the popular cloud computing security models as well as the diverse parameters of cloud security which will involve virtualization, compliance, framework, risk management, dynamic access security, internet access security and access management. Introduction The biggest problem facing network computing and distributed systems is security. Cloud computing refers to internet computing and it is the latest concept that has the capability to increase an organization’s service delivery efficiency. The security models of cloud computing that are cloud multiple tenancy model of NIST, cloud risk accumulation model of CSA, Jerico forum’s cloud cube model and the mapping model of cloud, compliance and security are supported by the three cloud services models. Resources for cloud computing are scalable and dynamic .The representation of cloud computing is elaborated through three cloud computing service models which are platform as a service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) (Patrick, 2013). The main aim of these cloud computing service models is to be able to provide the IT departments with focus on the various strategic projects as well as cutting down on the operational costs (Ritesh, Anant war& Swati, 2012). The cloud computing models are considered to have a variety of dimensions that are used to further worsen the security problem. The cloud computing model comprises of two main features which are elasticity and multi-tenancy. Elasticity depends on the presence of secure placement strategies andsecures service migration while multi-tenancy feature results to virtualization and thus the boundaries among different host services need to be improved. At present the available security strategies are only for the single cloud user and single cloud provider but if cloud computing in the future moves to a multiple provider environment security there will be a greater challenge in addressing the issue of security (Patrick, 2013). Users of cloud computing are able to access their database resources from the internet regardless of their location. It is quite clear that the use of cloud services is important and offers a lot of benefits to the user or the enterprise that has ad apted the new technology. Cloud computing can thus be regarded as a model that enables convenience on the demand network access to the shared computing resources. As stated by Amarnath et. al.2010 virtualization technology is used to optimize the performance of the application in a cost effective way but this technology can introduce some security risks. Therefore, cloud computing security plays a major role because the customers outsource computation tasks and data on cloud computing servers which are managed by cloud providers who cannot be trusted (Amarnath, 2010). Cloud computing has become popular as a result of many enterprise applications moving to the cloud platforms. However, the issue of security has become a major barrier point for cloud computing adoption. Based on a recent survey research conducted by the International Data Corporation almost 87.5% of the IT executives stated that security is a major challenge that must be dealt with in each cloud service. Therefore, th ere is need to come up with applications that will be used to curb the threats brought about by security by using some security