With the increase in data volumes, data handling has become the talk of the town. As companies begin to move to the cloud, there is a higher emphasis ensuring everything is safe and secure, and that there is no risk of data hacking or breaches. Since the cloud allows people to work without hardware and software investments, users can gain flexibility and data agility. However, since the Cloud is often shared between a lot of users, security becomes an immediate concern for Cloud owners.
Security Issues Within The Cloud
Cloud vendors provide a layer of security to user’s data. However, it is still not enough since the confidentiality of data can often be at risk. There are various types of attacks, which range from password guessing attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks to insider attacks, shoulder surfing attacks, and phishing attacks. Here is a list of the security challenges which are present within the cloud:
Data Protection and Misuse: When different organizations use the cloud to store their data, there is often a risk of data misuse. To avoid this risk, there is an imminent need to secure the data repositories. To achieve this task, one can use authentication and restrict access control for the cloud’s data.
Locality: Within the cloud world, data is often distributed over a series of regions; it is quite challenging to find the exact location of the data storage. However, as data is moved from one country to another, the rules governing the data storage also change; this brings compliance issues and data privacy laws into the picture, which pertain to the storage of data within the cloud. As a cloud service provider, the service provider has to inform the users of their data storage laws, and the exact location of the data storage server.
Integrity: The system needs to be rigged in such a manner so to provide security and access restrictions. In other words, data access should lie with authorized personnel only. In a cloud environment, data integrity should be maintained at all times to avoid any inherent data loss. Apart from restricting access, the permissions to make changes to the data should be limited to specific people, so that there is no widespread access problem at a later stage.
Access: Data security policies concerning the access and control of data are essential in the long run. Authorized data owners are required to give part access to individuals so that everyone gets only the required access for parts of the data stored within the data mart. By controlling and restricting access, there is a lot of control and data security which can be levied to ensure maximums security for the stored data.
Confidentiality: There is a lot of sensitive data which might be stored in the cloud. This data has to have extra layers of security on it to reduce the chances of breaches and phishing attacks; this can be done by the service provider, as well as the organization. However, as a precaution, data confidentiality should be of utmost priority for sensitive material.
Breaches: Breaches within the cloud are not unheard. Hackers can breach security parameters within the cloud, and steal the data which might otherwise be considered confidential for organizations. On the contrary, a breach can be an internal attack, so organizations need to lay particular emphasis in tracking employee actions to avoid any unwanted attacks on stored data.
Storage: For organizations, the data is being stored and made available virtually. However, for service providers, it is necessary to store the data in physical infrastructures, which makes the data vulnerable and conducive to physical attacks.
These are some of the security issues which come as a part of the cloud environment. However, these are not exactly difficult to overcome, especially with the available levels of technological resources these days. There is a lot of emphasis on ensuring maximum security for the stored data so that it complies with the rules and regulations, as well as the organization’s internal compliance policies.
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