A Survey of the State of Cloud Security

Cloud computing has emerged as an important paradigm in computing today with the potential to offer scalable, fault tolerant services and reduce costs significantly. However, security concerns present significant barriers in its adoption industry wide. The multitenant nature of the cloud and the fact that data is stored in multiple locations compound these security concerns. Confidentiality, authenticity, integrity, availability and auditability are key aspects that need to be accounted for, when dealing with security. Guarantees of secure data and transactions from the service provider will enable more users to migrate to a cloud environment. Employing Intrusion Detection Systems, Cryptographic techniques and Computer Forensic Tools that recover deleted files and collect digital evidence of intruder activities are among some of the guarantees a trustful service provider can provide. This paper presents a survey on some of the common threats and associated risks on cloud platforms along with ways of tackling these threats. We also review data management and security model of some of the leading cloud service providers.