Main Issues of Cloud Computing - Coursework Example

Cloud Computing Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Abstract 2 Introduction 3 Problem Statement 5 Understanding the Known Approaches 6 Analysis of the New Approaches 10 Conclusion 13 References 15 Abstract Cloud computing is a comparatively new concept. It has taken the world of computing by storm. It is expected to describe the future of the computer and network related activities. Cloud computing is built on dedicated research work by utilising distributed computing, utility computing, networking and virtualisation features. The architecture associated with it mainly implies platform, software and application as services. This creates a benefit to the end users by the reduction in overhead, total cost of ownership, greater flexibility, and also by on demand services. Security is also a major issue related to cloud computing. In this report, these issues related to cloud computing is looked at to analyse its present and find out its future prospects. Introduction Cloud Computing can be stated as a term which describes a type of application as well as a platform. A cloud computing related platform dynamically configures, reconfigures, provisions, and also de - provision servers as they are needed. Servers’ part of a cloud can turn out to be a virtual machine or a physical machine. Advanced level of cloud usually include separate computing resources like Storage Area Networks (SANs), firewall, network equipment, and also other security related devices. Cloud computing generally describes different applications which are extended in such a way that they are accessible through the medium of internet. This cloud related applications normally use powerful servers and large data centers that work for hosting web services and web applications. Anybody with a standard browser and an appropriate internet connection can get hold of a cloud related application (Boss & Et. Al., 2007). The expression ‘cloud computing’ possibly emanate from the use of a cloud image for representing some large network environment or internet. The use of the term cloud is done as a metaphor for internet. Cloud computing in fundamental nature is distributed computing. Cloud computing mainly access services and resources needed for performing various functions with rapidly changing needs (Hartig, 2009). There are quite a few important characteristics associated with cloud computing environment. Multi-tenancy is a characteristic of cloud computing which ensures certain benefits like increased peak load capacity, efficiency developments for systems that are time and again under utilised, dynamic allocation of storage, CPU, and also network bandwidth, centralisation of infrastructure and also lower costs. Reliability is generally improved in the use of cloud computing environment because service related providers make use of multiple redundant sites. This scenario creates an attractive prospect for enterprises for business oriented continuation and disaster recovery related reasons. Cloud computing has a better scalability option which can vary according to the change in user demand. Service providers generally manage the required infrastructure of cloud computing and therefore, the security is of vastly improved quality (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2009). The cloud computing infrastructure allows enterprises to achieve greater efficiency in the use of the information technology software and hardware investments. In the cloud computing system, the consumers can keep away from capital infrastructure by renting the usage from a third party infrastructure. Separation and decoupling of the business service from the required infrastructure to run the process which transforms to virtualization is also possible. There is also an opportunity to reduce the costs because of operational efficiency and also a scope of faster deployment of newer business related services. Problem Statement Cloud computing roots are traced back to the application service providers in the era of 1990s. Cloud computing evolved from a relatively smaller concept of utility computing to a broader concept of cloud computing. Cloud computing concept incorporates three features such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) (Raja & Verma, n.d.). Cloud computing has quite a few issues or areas related to such as reliability, data security, privacy, governance, cost, simplicity, compliance, sustainability, open source, performance and availability. Large scale multi - tenancy is a very important benefit and an area associated with cloud computing. This enables a business set up utilising cloud computing to achieve considerable economic advantage. This system ensures sharing of resources as well as purchasing power related to incredibly large-scale multi-tenant data centers also provides an advantage on the economic front (ACM, 2009). Understanding the Known Approaches The cloud computing is based on a layered architecture which consist of client, services, application, platform, storage and infrastructure. Each layer of the architecture is founded upon the previous layer. A cloud related client has in it, computer software and computer hardware. The application part of cloud computing consists of Software as a Service (SaaS). It is the lightest as well as capstone layer. This view is considered from an end user perspective, which would be the purchasing entity of SaaS from a vendor side. In case of very large enterprises who are engaged in internal software development, the platform as a service (PaaS) layer would be considered as a capstone. There is also hardware layer in which hardware is considered as a not to expensive commodity. Fault tolerance and redundancy associated with a hardware layer is handled within the spectrum of software layer. The virtualisation layer is the operating system layer. The physical hardware in this case is pieced into a virtual machine which consists of their own small operating system generally Unix or Linux operating system. These virtual machines generally are collected into various pools which are based upon their acquired resources. These resources are considered as the key element in providing the elasticity relating to server architecture. These machines can be brought from online sources and also can be assigned in to a resource pool on – the - fly as and when the demand on that specific pool increases. They can also be destroyed in case they are no longer required. The capability of prerequisite as well as destroy virtual machines as and when needed allows a vendor related to it to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). There are quite a few major vendors associated with this layer like Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix (Leon, 2009). Layers Architecture (Raja & Verma, n.d.) Software as a Service (SaaS) provider manages and hosts an application in their individual data center and then it makes it available for users and multiple tenants over the web. There are few SaaS providers which operate on IaaS and PaaS service offerings. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Oracle CRM on demand are few of the examples of a renowned SaaS provider. Platform as a Service (PaaS) can be considered as a deployment platform and an application development delivered as a service to various developers over the web. It is a facilitator of deployment and development of applications without the complexity and cost of purchasing and also managing the essential infrastructure. It also provides the required facilities for facilitating the total life cycle of delivering and building services and web applications. This platform comprises of infrastructure software which has developmental tools, database, and middleware. Some of the PaaS offerings consist of API or particular programming languages like Google AppEngine is a PaaS contribution where the developers can write in Java or in Python. In some cases, PaaS providers acquire proprietary languages like force.com from Salesforce.com and also Coghead, which is now possessed by SAP. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can be stated as a delivery of a hardware like storage, network, server and also associated software like file system and operating system virtualization technology as a service. It is a kind of evolution of the process of traditional hosting which allow users to provide for various resources on demand. It also does not need long period commitment. IaaS providers keep the data center in working mode. The users of the PaaS service provider has to manage and deploy software related services on their own like their own data center. Secure Storage Services (S3) and Amazon web services elastic compute cloud (EC2) are IaaS offerings (Bennett & Et. Al., 2009). Cloud computing consists of both pros and cons such as reduced cost, increased storage, more mobility and highly automated. It allows information technology to shift focus. Cloud technology is incrementally paid i.e. a user can pay only for their required amount of storage or use. This has a benefit as it helps to save organizations money in the short run period. This saved money can be utilised for other necessities. Increase in storage also is beneficial for organisation as they can store greater quantity data then that can be stored in a private computer system. Highly automated facility of cloud computing means that information technology personnel doesn’t require to keep software on a up to date basis as the maintenance of such functions is done by the service provider available on the cloud. Employees can utlise the mobility feature of cloud computing to access information as and when they require them without remaining fixed at their desks. Information technology also can get huge benefit from the services provided by cloud computing as they do not require worrying for constant server updates and few other computing problems. Government organizations also can concentrate on innovating new services. Cloud computing requires a user to loose their own control by implementing web application. The other issues and problems associated with cloud computing are security, reliance of a third party, uncertainty of benefits, cost of transition (Mirzaei, 2008). Cloud computing and the security issue associated with it has grown over the years. Public clouds are available in the cloud architecture from sources such as google.com, amazon.com, oracle sun, Microsoft, eucalyptus and canonical and number of other vendors. In case of private cloud, technology where the cloud related software is loaded in house or on local server hardware are conveniently available from VMware, Citrix, Eucalyptus, Microsoft and many more vendors. There are quite a few vulnerability attached with cloud computing. Web application vulnerability associated with cloud computing consists of ‘sql’ injection and cross-site scripting. Accessibility vulnerability is an inherent vulnerability to the TCP/IP stacks and also the operating systems like denial of services and also distributed denial of services. Authentication of the devices and services from the respondents by IP spoofing, APR poisoning (spoofing), RIP attacks and also DNS poisoning are common scenario of vulnerabilities associated with internet. Data verification and tampering, theft and loss of data on executing functions on a local machine as well as transit or from third party devices or from remote back ups are also associated with the security concern from cloud computing. Physical access of data related issues, privacy and control issues emanating from third party involving scenarios in which they have physical control of data is also a critical issue (Wolf, 2010). Cloud computing service providers also need to look at some other information technology related risks associated with cloud computing such as policy and organization risks, legal risks, and technical risks. Cloud computing has associated with it certain cloud middleware like storage provisions, network provisions, operating systems provisions, services applications provisions, and security, billing and payment options. Analysis of the New Approaches The information technology related risks associated with cloud computing can be mitigated by certain strategies like audit control, service level agreements, policies and procedure and also suitable forms of governance (Betcher, 2010). Cloud security standards are reviewed and analysed by Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). Cloud standards website is coordinating and collecting information about the various cloud related standards. An open web application security project always maintains the latest security and vulnerability threats associated with a cloud based software. In future also this could play a vital role in protecting cloud based users from getting affected by vulnerabilities associated with cloud based computing. A forum such as open grid forum which is a publisher of various documents containing security and also infrastructural information and specifications can be set up in future too to protect the users. Web application solutions related to security can be developed by using a framework for developmental activity to tech and to show respect for security. A road map towards development endeavour which is focused on cloud centric development and also the use of X10 language could be a way to attain much better use of the cloud related capabilities. This can be achieved by huge amount of parallel processing and also through concurrency. Accessibility related security concerns can be monitored by filtering a packet sniffer output for precise services in order to address security concerns which are shown by the anomalous packets focussed on to specific services or ports. Shutting down unused services, reducing permissions, and deploying access rights to all the applications and the users, and keeping the patches updated can provide the necessary solution against the vulnerabilities. Authentication solution such as IP spoofing can be avoided by the use of encrypted protocols in all possible opportunities. ARP poisoning can be restricted by setting a method in which the root access can only be accomplished by using static ARP table and making certain that changes in ARP table are logged. Privacy and control issues cannot be entirely resolved but it can be reduced and maintained by tight service level agreements (SLAs) or also by keeping the cloud of the service provided itself as private. Data verification, loss, theft and tampering are extremely important for cloud computing security scenario. Resource isolation can make sure security of various data during the processing stage. Other processes related to preventing such scenarios include isolating virtual caches and processor caches. This will ensure that user related personal data and encrypted data is not stolen by anonymous sources (Wolf, 2010). . Cloud computing has created enormous opportunities for users to reduce the complexity and time related with internet and data issues. Conclusion Cloud computing has brought with several new opportunities for business to acquire information technology solutions. The security issue related to cloud computing is one of the major concerns for the present as well as future users of cloud computing. Flexibility in the cloud security system can be the major part of improvement in the cloud computing. Flexibility can be attained by formulating the primitives related to security around shielding diverse stakeholders against diverse threat models. Another security issue is determining suitable granularities for isolation. This can be done through local area network (LANs), physical or virtual machines, and clouds or data centres. The performance and security of cloud provider can improve if they recommend dissimilar granularities of isolation as a component of their range of security. Side channels and also covert channels create a fundamental threat. Mutual audibility is also a crucial area for future of cloud computing security issue. In cloud computing, users as well as service providers need to demonstrate mutual trustworthiness. A continuous research process can go a long way in reducing the number of threats related to cloud computing and related security issues (Chen & Et. Al., 2010). Cloud computing has attained a significant position in the business segment. Security issues have become and will, in future, become a significant issue with cloud computing. There are quite a few issues associated with shared computing that create a concern for cloud computing. Cloud computing mainly targets consumers who require extensive amount business reasons. Security has therefore gained and in future will gain an elevated significance for them. Cloud computing creates a shift in the power in case of information technology away from individuals controlling capital resources to the users and also developers who are employing self services to provisions. References ACM, 2009. Cloud Computing: An Overview. Distributed Computing. [Online] Available at: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1560000/1554608/p2-cto_overview.pdf?key1=1554608&key2=7601498721&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=94602278&CFTOKEN=10022481 [Accessed July 12, 2010]. Bennett, S. & Et. Al., 2009. Architectural Strategies for Cloud Computing. Oracle. [Online] Available at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/pdf/architectural_strategies_for_cloud_computing.pdf [Accessed July 12, 2010]. Boss, G. & Et. Al., 2007. Cloud Computing. IBM Corporation. [Online] Available at: http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/dw/wes/hipods/Cloud_computing_wp_final_8Oct.pdf [Accessed July 12, 2010]. Betcher, T. J., 2010. Cloud Computing: Key IT-Related Risks and Mitigation Strategies for Consideration by IT Security Practitioners. University of Oregon. [Online] Available at: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/10207/Betcher-2010.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed July 12, 2010]. Chen, Y. & Et. Al., 2010. What’s New about Cloud Computing Security? University of California at Berkeley. [Online] Available at: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2010/EECS-2010-5.pdf [Accessed July 12, 2010]. Hartig, K., 2009. What is Cloud Computing? Cloud Computing Journal. [Online] Available at: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/579826 [Accessed July 12, 2010]. Leon, E. D., 2009. The Five Layers within Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing Journal. 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