With the growing cyber-security threats, ensuring the security of data in Cloud data centers is a challenging task. A prominent type of attack on Cloud data centers is data tampering attack that can jeopardize the confidentiality and the integrity of data. In this article, we present a security and performance driven architecture for these centers that incorporates an intrusion management system for multi-tenant distributed transactional databases. The proposed architecture uses a novel data partitioning and placement scheme based on damage containment and communication cost of distributed transactions. In addition, we present a benchmarking framework for evaluating the performance of the proposed architecture. The results illustrate a trade-off between security and performance goals for Cloud data centers.
Cloud computing has been adopted widely, providing on-demand computing resources to improve perfornance and reduce the operational costs. However, these new functionalities also bring new ways to exploit the cloud computing environment. To assess the security of the cloud, graphical security models can be used, such as Attack Graphs and Attack Trees. However, existing models do not consider all types of threats, and also automating the security assessment functions are difficult. In this paper, we propose a new security assessment tool for the cloud named CloudSafe, an automated security asses…
This paper discusses about the challenges, advantages and shortcomings of existing solutions in data security and privacy in public cloud computing. As in cloud computing, oceans of data will be stored. Data stored in public cloud would face both outside attacks and inside attacks since public cloud provider themselves are untrusted. Conventional encryption could be used for storage, however most data in cloud needs further computation. Decryption before computation will cause large overheads for data operation and lots of inconvenience. Thus, efficient methods to protect data security as well…
Integrating Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) with cloud computing instances is a rapidly emerging trend on commercial cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Huawei cloud, and Alibaba cloud. Cloud FPGAs allow cloud users to build hardware accelerators to speed up the computation in the cloud. However, since the cloud FPGA technology is still in its infancy, the security implications of this integration of FPGAs in the cloud are not clear. In this paper, we survey the emerging field of cloud FPGA security, providing a comprehensive overview of the security issues rela…
In this paper, we present the Cloud Property Graph (CloudPG), which bridges the gap between static code analysis and runtime security assessment of cloud services. The CloudPG is able to resolve data flows between cloud applications deployed on different resources, and contextualizes the graph with runtime information, such as encryption settings. To provide a vendor- and technology-independent representation of a cloud service's security posture, the graph is based on an ontology of cloud resources, their functionalities and security features. We show, using an example, that our CloudPG frame…
Cloud Computing refers to the use of computer resources as a service on-demand via internet. It is mainly based on data and applications outsourcing, traditionally stored on users' computers, to remote servers (datacenters) owned, administered and managed by third parts. This paper is an overview of data security issues in the cloud computing. Its objective is to highlight the principal issues related to data security that raised by cloud environment. To do this, these issues was classified into three categories: 1-data security issues raised by single cloud characteristics compared to traditi…
Organizations have rapidly shifted infrastructure and applications over to public cloud computing services such as AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud Platform, and Azure. Unfortunately, such services have security models that are substantially different and more complex than traditional enterprise security models. As a result, misconfiguration errors in cloud deployments have led to dozens of well-publicized breaches. This paper describes Thunder CTF, a scaffolded, scenario-based CTF (Capture-the-Flag) for helping students learn about and practice cloud security skills. Thunder CTF is eas…
Millions of users across the world leverages data processing and sharing benefits from cloud environment. Data security and privacy are inevitable requirement of cloud environment. Massive usage and sharing of data among users opens door to security loopholes. This paper envisages a discussion of cloud environment, its utilities, challenges, and emerging research trends confined to secure processing and sharing of data.
Cloud service providers offer their customers with on-demand and cost-effective services, scalable computing, and network infrastructures. Enterprises migrate their services to the cloud to utilize the benefit of cloud computing such as eliminating the capital expense of their computing need. There are security vulnerabilities and threats in the cloud. Many researches have been proposed to analyze the cloud security using Graphical Security Models (GSMs) and security metrics. In addition, it has been widely researched in finding appropriate defensive strategies for the security of the cloud. M…
In this article, we provide a cloud-security checklist for IaaS cloud deployments. The elements of the checklist are established by surveying the related literature on cloud-threat models and various security recommendations. We define the elements of the list on a level of abstraction that helps keep the size of the list manageable while preserving the list's practical applicability.
While cloud computing provides lower Infrastructure cost, higher agility and faster delivery, it also presents higher operational and security risks for business critical assets, but a well-designed solution and security architecture will keep businesses safe during and after migrating their assets to the cloud. This paper has researched and identified best security practices and how to improve a security architecture in a cloud environment.
The synergy between the cloud and the IoT has emerged largely due to the cloud having attributes which directly benefit the IoT and enable its continued growth. IoT adopting Cloud services has brought new security challenges. In this book chapter, we pursue two main goals: 1) to analyse the different components of Cloud computing and the IoT and 2) to present security and privacy problems that these systems face. We thoroughly investigate current security and privacy preservation solutions that exist in this area, with an eye on the Industrial Internet of Things, discuss open issues and propos…
In order to determine the user's trust is a growing concern for ensuring privacy and security in a cloud computing environment. In cloud, user's data is stored in one or more remote server(s) which poses more security challenges for the system. One of the most important concerns is to protect user's sensitive information from other users and hackers that may cause data leakage in cloud storage. Having this security challenge in mind, this paper focuses on the development of a more secure cloud environment, to determine the trust of the service requesting authorities by using a novel VM (Virtua…
The Cloud Computing concept offers dynamically scalable resources provisioned as a service over the Internet.Economic benefits are the main driver for the Cloud, since it promises the reduction of capital expenditure and operational expenditure.In order for this to become reality, however, there are still some challenges to be solved. Amongst these are security and trust issues, since the user data has to be released to the Cloud and thus leaves the protection sphere of the data owner. Most of the discussions on these topics are mainly driven by arguments related to organisational means. This …
The Cloud has become a new Information Technology(IT) model for delivering resources such as computing and storage to customers on demand, it provides both high flexibility and resources use. However we are gaining these advantages at the cost of high security threats, which presents the major brake for the migration towards Cloud Computing. Cloud Data Storage(CDS) is one of the Cloud services, it allows users to store their data in the Cloud, this service is very useful for companies and individuals, but data security remains the problem which makes customers worried about their data that res…
This paper produces a baseline security analysis of the Cloud Computing Operational Environment in terms of threats, vulnerabilities and impacts. An analysis is conducted and the top three threats are identified with recommendations for practitioners. The conclusion of the analysis is that the most serious threats are non-technical and can be solved via management processes rather than technical countermeasures
The popularity of cloud based Infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS) solutions is becoming increasingly popular. However, since IaaS providers and customers interact in a flexible and scalable environment, security remains a serious concern. To handle such security issues, defining a set of security parameters in the service level agreements (SLA) between both, IaaS provider and customer, is of utmost importance. In this paper, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) guidelines are evaluated to extract a set of security parameters for IaaS. Furthermore, the level of applicabi…
The concept of cloud computing was introduced to meet the increase in demand for new application for a project, and to provide a large storage facility whenever or wherever a user needs it. The cloud system facility helped many industries as well as individual users to get authentic software at a very low cost. But with this new system comes the major concern of security, as the connection to the cloud is through the web and the data and application availability need to be handled for each client. The paper describes the various security measures that can be added in isolation or in combinatio…
In recent years, the existence of a significant cross-impact between Cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) has lead to a dichotomy that gives raise to Cloud-Assisted IoT (CAIoT) and IoT-Based Cloud (IoTBC). Although it is pertinent to study both technologies, this paper focuses on CAIoT, and especially its security issues, which are inherited from both Cloud computing and IoT. This study starts with reviewing existing relevant surveys, noting their shortcomings, which motivate a comprehensive survey in this area. We proceed to highlight existing approaches towards the design of Secure C…
Abstract--- With the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), current Cloud systems face various drawbacks such as lack of mobility support, location-awareness, geo-distribution, high latency, as well as cyber threats. Fog/Edge computing has been proposed for addressing some of the drawbacks, as it enables computing resources at the network's edges and it locally offers big-data analytics rather than transmitting them to the Cloud. The Fog is defined as a Cloud-like system having similar functions, including software-, platform- and infrastructure-as services. The deployment of Fog applic…
Cloud computing is a revolutionary concept that has brought a paradigm shift in the IT world. This has made it possible to manage and run businesses without even setting up an IT infrastructure. It offers multi-fold benefits to the users moving to a cloud, while posing unknown security and privacy issues. User authentication is one such growing concern and is greatly needed in order to ensure privacy and security in a cloud computing environment. This paper discusses the security at different levels viz. network, application and virtualization, in a cloud computing environment. A security fram…
Virtualization technologies allow multiple tenants to share physical resources with a degree of security and isolation that cannot be guaranteed by mere containerization. Further, virtualization allows protected transparent introspection of Virtual Machine activity and content, thus supporting additional control and monitoring. These features provide an explanation, although partial, of why virtualization has been an enabler for the flourishing of cloud services. Nevertheless, security and privacy issues are still present in virtualization technology and hence in Cloud platforms. As an example…
The aim of this paper is to develop a model to ensure data stored in the cloud. Model based on situations that arise in a business environment. The model also includes individual participants and their data operations. Implementation of the model is transferred using UML. The model is divided into 7 modules. Each module is apparent from the terms of data security and described specific situations when working with data. Based on this model it is possible to convert the implementation of cloud into enterprise environments with respect to data security in the firm.
Cloud computing is a complex infrastructure of software, hardware, processing, and storage that is available as a service. Cloud computing offers immediate access to large numbers of the world's most sophisticated supercomputers and their corresponding processing power, interconnected at various locations around the world, proffering speed in the tens of trillions of computations per second. Information in databases and software scattered around the Internet. There are many service providers in the internet, we can call each service as a cloud, each cloud service will exchange data with other …
Today, Cloud Computing is rising strongly, presenting itself to the market by its main service models, known as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, that offer advantages in operational investments by means of on-demand costs, where consumers pay by resources used. In face of this growth, security threats also rise, compromising the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of the services provided. Our work is a Systematic Mapping where we hope to present metrics about publications available in literature that deal with some of the seven security threats in Cloud Computing, based in the guide entitled "Top…
The market for cloud computing can be considered as the major growth area in ICT. However, big companies and public authorities are reluctant to entrust their most sensitive data to external parties for storage and processing. The reason for their hesitation is clear: There exist no satisfactory approaches to adequately protect the data during its lifetime in the cloud. The EU Project Prismacloud (Horizon 2020 programme; duration 2/2015-7/2018) addresses these challenges and yields a portfolio of novel technologies to build security enabled cloud services, guaranteeing the required security wi…
Cloud computing is a term coined to a network that offers incredible processing power, a wide array of storage space and unbelievable speed of computation. Social media channels, corporate structures and individual consumers are all switching to the magnificent world of cloud computing. The flip side to this coin is that with cloud storage emerges the security issues of confidentiality, data integrity and data availability. Since the cloud is a mere collection of tangible super computers spread across the world, authentication and authorization for data access is more than a necessity. Our wor…
Data security and privacy is an important but challenging problem in cloud computing. One of the security concerns from cloud users is how to efficiently verify the integrity of their data stored on the cloud server. Third Party Auditing (TPA) is a new technique proposed in recent years to achieve this goal. In a recent paper (IEEE Transactions on Computers 62(2): 362-375 (2013)), Wang et al. proposed a highly efficient and scalable TPA protocol and also a Zero Knowledge Public Auditing protocol which can prevent offline guessing attacks. However, in this paper, we point out several security w…
Moving Target Defense (MTD) is a proactive security mechanism which changes the attack surface aiming to confuse attackers. Cloud computing leverages MTD techniques to enhance cloud security posture against cyber threats. While many MTD techniques have been applied to cloud computing, there has not been a joint evaluation of the effectiveness of MTD techniques with respect to security and economic metrics. In this paper, we first introduce mathematical definitions for the combination of three MTD techniques: \emph{Shuffle}, \emph{Diversity}, and \emph{Redundancy}. Then, we utilize four securit…
The cloud model allows many enterprises able to outsource computing resources at an affordable price without having to commit the expense upfront. Although the cloud providers are responsible for the security of the cloud, there are still many security concerns due to inherently complex model the cloud providers operate on (e.g.,multi-tenancy). In addition, the enterprises whose services have migrated into the cloud have a preference for their own cybersecurity situation awareness capability on top of the security mechanisms provided by the cloud providers. In this way, the enterprises can mon…
Cloud computing comes with a lot of advanced features along with privacy and security problem. Smart meter data takes the benefit of cloud computing in the smart grid. User's privacy can be compromised by analyzing the smart meter data generated by household electrical appliances. The user loses control over the data while data is shifted to the cloud. This paper describes the issues under the privacy and security of smart meter data in the cloud environment. We also compare the existing approaches for preserving the privacy and security of smart meter data.
We present a case study on the strategic planning of a security operations center in a typical, modern, mid-size organization. Against the backdrop of the company's multi-cloud strategy a distributed approach envisioning the involvement of external providers is taken. From a security-centric abstraction of the organizational IT-landscape, a novel strategic planning method for security operation centers is developed with an adaptable relationship matrix as core tool. The method is put to a practical test in modeling different levels of engagement of external providers in the center's operation.…
Security issues in processor architectures remain really critical since users and devices continue to share computing as well as networking resources. So, preserving data privacy in such an environment is really a critical concern. We know that there is a continuous growth in security and privacy issues that need to be addressed. Here, we have chosen a microservice architecture, which is a small or even an independent microprocess that interacts, acts, and responds to messages via lightweight technologies such as Thrift, HTTP, or REST API.
Securing cloud configurations is an elusive task, which is left up to system administrators who have to base their decisions on ``trial and error'' experimentations or by observing good practices (e.g., CIS Benchmarks). We propose a knowledge, AND/OR, graphs approach to model cloud deployment security objects and vulnerabilities. In this way, we can capture relationships between configurations, permissions (e.g., CAP\_SYS\_ADMIN), and security profiles (e.g., AppArmor and SecComp), as first-class citizens. Such an approach allows us to suggest alternative and safer configurations, support admi…
Blockchain (BC) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are some of the most prominent emerging technologies in recent research. These technologies provide security, integrity, as well as confidentiality in their respective applications. Cloud computing has also been a popular comprehensive technology for several years. Confidential information is often shared with the cloud infrastructure to give customers access to remote resources, such as computation and storage operations. However, cloud computing also presents substantial security threats, issues, and challenges. Therefore, to overcome the…
IoT is the fastest-growing technology with a wide range of applications in various domains. IoT devices generate data from a real-world environment every second and transfer it to the cloud due to the less storage at the edge site. An outsourced cloud is a solution for handling the storage problem. Users' privacy can be exposed by storing the data on the cloud. Therefore, we propose a Private Data Storage model that stores IoT data on the outsourced cloud with privacy preservation. Fog nodes are used at the edge side for data partition and encryption. Partitioned and encrypted data is aggregat…
This paper reviews existing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) that target the Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), Cloud Computing (CC), and Mobile Device (MD) environment. The review identifies the drawbacks in existing solutions and proposes a novel approach towards enhancing the security of the User Layer (UL) in the MCC environment. The approach named MINDPRES (Mobile- Cloud Intrusion Detection and Prevention System) combines a host-based IDS and network-based IDS using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. It applies dynamic analysis of both device resources and network traffic in order to detect ma…
There is a dynamic escalation and extension in the new infrastructure, educating personnel and licensing new computer programs in the field of IT, due to the emergence of Cloud Computing (CC) paradigm. It has become a quick growing segment of IT business in last couple of years. However, due to the rapid growth of data, people and IT firms, the issue of information security is getting more complex. One of the major concerns of the user is, at what degree the data is safe on Cloud? In spite of all promotional material encompassing the cloud, consortium customers are not willing to shift their b…
We show that the Lei et al.'s scheme [Information Sciences, 280 (2014), 205-217] fails, because the verifying equation does not hold over the infinite field R. For the field R, the computational errors should be considered seriously. We also remark that the incurred communication cost in the scheme could be overtake the computational gain, which makes it somewhat artificial.
Business analytics processes are often composed from orchestrated, collaborating services, which are consumed by users from multiple cloud systems (in different security realms), which need to be engaged dynamically at runtime. If heterogeneous cloud systems located in different security realms do not have direct authentication relationships, then it is a considerable technical challenge to enable secure collaboration. In order to address this security challenge, a new authentication framework is required to establish trust amongst business analytics service instances and users by distributing…
Software Defined Networking (SDN), has introduced many advanced platforms for managing networks and adopting different security tools with them, but the cost of these platforms should be considered as well. In this paper, we present an extension of the existing approach to the optimal placement of virtual security appliances in a pre-defined network setting. The approach proposed by Bouet [1] only considered one security appliance, we extended his approach to several virtual security appliances. We conducted several simulation tests showing good performances of our approach. To show the feasib…
In todays world, Cloud computing has attracted research communities as it provides services in reduced cost due to virtualizing all the necessary resources. Even modern business architecture depends upon Cloud computing .As it is a internet based utility, which provides various services over a network, it is prone to network based attacks. Hence security in clouds is the most important in case of cloud computing. Cloud Security concerns the customer to fully rely on storing data on clouds. That is why Cloud security has attracted attention of the research community. This paper will discuss sec…
Cloud computing is the internet based provisioning of the computing resources, software, and information on demand. Cloud Computing is referred to as one of most recent emerging paradigms of computing utilities. Since Cloud computing is the dominant infrastructure of the shared services over the internet, it is important to be aware of the security risk and the challenges associated with this emerging computing paradigm. This survey provides a brief introduction to the cloud computing, its major characteristics, and service models. It also explores cloud security threats, lists a few security …
Modern cloud computing platforms based on virtual machine monitors carry a variety of complex business that present many network security vulnerabilities. At present, the traditional architecture employs a number of security devices at front-end of cloud computing to protect its network security. Under the new environment, however, this approach can not meet the needs of cloud security. New cloud security vendors and academia also made great efforts to solve network security of cloud computing, unfortunately, they also cannot provide a perfect and effective method to solve this problem. We int…
Cloud computing is a new computational paradigm that offers an innovative business model for organizations to adopt IT without upfront investment. Despite the potential gains achieved from the cloud computing, the model security is still questionable which impacts the cloud model adoption. The security problem becomes more complicated under the cloud model as new dimensions have entered into the problem scope related to the model architecture, multi-tenancy, elasticity, and layers dependency stack. In this paper we introduce a detailed analysis of the cloud security problem. We investigated th…
Cloud Computing holds the potential to eliminate the requirements for setting up of high-cost computing infrastructure for the IT-based solutions and services that the industry uses. It promises to provide a flexible IT architecture, accessible through internet for lightweight portable devices. This would allow many-fold increase in the capacity or capabilities of the existing and new software. In a cloud computing environment, the entire data reside over a set of networked resources, enabling the data to be accessed through virtual machines. Since these data centers may lie in any corner of t…
Cloud Computing holds the potential to eliminate the requirements for setting up of high-cost computing infrastructure for IT-based solutions and services that the industry uses. It promises to provide a flexible IT architecture, accessible through internet for lightweight portable devices. This would allow multi-fold increase in the capacity or capabilities of the existing and new software. In a cloud computing environment, the entire data reside over a set of networked resources, enabling the data to be accessed through virtual machines. Since these data-centers may lie in any corner of the …
