A survey on security issues and solutions at different layers of Cloud computing

Cloud computing offers scalable on-demand services to consumers with greater flexibility and lesser infrastructure investment. Since Cloud services are delivered using classical network protocols and formats over the Internet, implicit vulnerabilities existing in these protocols as well as threats introduced by newer architectures raise many security and privacy concerns. In this paper, we survey the factors affecting Cloud computing adoption, vulnerabilities and attacks, and identify relevant solution directives to strengthen security and privacy in the Cloud environment

From security to assurance in the cloud: a survey

The cloud computing paradigm has become a mainstream solution for the deployment of business processes and applications. In the public cloud vision, infrastructure, platform, and software services are provisioned to tenants (i.e., customers and service providers) on a pay-as-you-go basis. Cloud tenants can use cloud resources at lower prices, and higher performance and flexibility, than traditional on-premises resources, without having to care about infrastructure management. Still, cloud tenants remain concerned with the cloud's level of service and the nonfunctional properties their applications can count on. In the last few years, the research community has been focusing on the nonfunctional aspects of the cloud paradigm, among which cloud security stands out. Several approaches to security have been described and summarized in general surveys on cloud security techniques. The survey in this article focuses on the interface between cloud security and cloud security assurance. First, we provide an overview of the state of the art on cloud security. Then, we introduce the notion of cloud security assurance and analyze its growing impact on cloud security approaches. Finally, we present some recommendations for the development of next-generation cloud security and assurance solutions

Cloud computing security taxonomy: From an atomistic to a holistic view

Countless discussions around security challenges affecting cloud computing are often large textual accounts, which can be cumbersome to read and prone to misinterpretation. The growing reliance on cloud computing means that not only should we focus on evaluating its security challenges but devote greater attention towards how challenges are viewed and communicated. With many cloud computing implementations in use and a growing evolution of the cloud paradigm (including fog, edge and cloudlets), comprehending, correlating and classifying diverse perspectives to security challenges increasingly becomes critical. Current classifications are only suited for limited use; both as effective tools for research and countermeasures design. The taxonomic approach has been used as a modeling technique towards classifying concepts across many domains. This paper surveys multiple perspectives of cloud security challenges and systematically develops corresponding graphical taxonomy based upon meta-synthesis of important cloud security concepts in literature. The contributions and significance of this work are as follows: (1) a holistic view simplifies visualization for the reader by providing illustrative graphics of existing textual perspectives, highlighting entity relationships among cloud entities/players thereby exposing security areas at every layer of the cloud. (2) a holistic taxonomy that facilitates the design of enforcement or corrective countermeasures based upon the source or origin of a security incident. (3) a holistic taxonomy highlights security boundary and identifies apt areas to implement security countermeasures

Nature-inspired survivability: Prey-inspired survivability countermeasures for cloud computing security challenges

As cloud computing environments become complex, adversaries have become highly sophisticated and unpredictable. Moreover, they can easily increase attack power and persist longer before detection. Uncertain malicious actions, latent risks, Unobserved or Unobservable risks (UUURs) characterise this new threat domain. This thesis proposes prey-inspired survivability to address unpredictable security challenges borne out of UUURs. While survivability is a well-addressed phenomenon in non-extinct prey animals, applying prey survivability to cloud computing directly is challenging due to contradicting end goals. How to manage evolving survivability goals and requirements under contradicting environmental conditions adds to the challenges. To address these challenges, this thesis proposes a holistic taxonomy which integrate multiple and disparate perspectives of cloud security challenges. In addition, it proposes the TRIZ (Teorija Rezbenija Izobretatelskib Zadach) to derive prey-inspired solutions through resolving contradiction. First, it develops a 3-step process to facilitate interdomain transfer of concepts from nature to cloud. Moreover, TRIZ’s generic approach suggests specific solutions for cloud computing survivability. Then, the thesis presents the conceptual prey-inspired cloud computing survivability framework (Pi-CCSF), built upon TRIZ derived solutions. The framework run-time is pushed to the user-space to support evolving survivability design goals. Furthermore, a target-based decision-making technique (TBDM) is proposed to manage survivability decisions. To evaluate the prey-inspired survivability concept, Pi-CCSF simulator is developed and implemented. Evaluation results shows that escalating survivability actions improve the vitality of vulnerable and compromised virtual machines (VMs) by 5% and dramatically improve their overall survivability. Hypothesis testing conclusively supports the hypothesis that the escalation mechanisms can be applied to enhance the survivability of cloud computing systems. Numeric analysis of TBDM shows that by considering survivability preferences and attitudes (these directly impacts survivability actions), the TBDM method brings unpredictable survivability information closer to decision processes. This enables efficient execution of variable escalating survivability actions, which enables the Pi-CCSF’s decision system (DS) to focus upon decisions that achieve survivability outcomes under unpredictability imposed by UUUR