Cloud Security and Security Challenges Revisited

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent security challenges in Cloud Computing, analyzing attack vectors and solutions, and introduces a security metric to help prioritize security efforts effectively.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive revisit of recent Cloud security attacks, evaluates proposed solutions, and introduces a security metric for prioritizing security challenges.

Findings

Identified key attack vectors on Cloud services

Evaluated effectiveness of existing security solutions

Proposed a security metric for prioritization

Abstract

In recent years, Cloud Computing has transformed local businesses and created new business models on the Internet- and Cloud services are still flourishing. But after the emphatic hype in the early years, a more realistic perception of Cloud services has emerged. One reason for this surely is that today, Cloud Computing is considered as an established and well-accepted technology and no longer as a technical novelty. But the second reason for this assessment might also be numerous security issues that Cloud Computing in general or specific Cloud services have experienced since then. In this paper, we revisit attacks on Cloud services and Cloud-related attack vectors that have been published in recent years. We then consider successful or proposed solutions to cope with these challenges. Based on these findings, we apply a security metric in order to rank all these Cloud-related security challenges concerning their severity. This should assist security professionals to prioritize their efforts toward addressing these issues.