CLOUD SECURITY CHALLENGES: IMPLICATION ON EDUCATION

Security remains a major challenge to most emerging technologies (ETs). Although, emerging technologies offer potential benefits which ease systems and human activities, but they also have some security issues that often affect their adoption and usage. Cloud technology has brought a lot of transformations to data storage for both individuals and organizations. Cloud offers flexibility for data storage, access and recovery, but it is not immune to the security challenges associated with other ETs. There have been concerns about data integrity and privacy of cloud customers. Outsourcing data in the cloud exposes the data to several kinds of attacks ranging from data leakage, data tampering, repudiation, Denial of Service (DOS) attack, spoofing identity, and unauthorized access to data. These attacks are often orchestrated by insiders and outsiders, and can compromise the confidentiality and integrity of cloud data. Most educational institutions are digitalizing their data which are ultimately moved to the cloud to be managed by a third party. Considering the sacred nature of educational data, the study examines the implications of cloud security challenges on education. The findings show that security is very significant to the successful migration and implementation of cloud technology in the educational sector. It also shows that the growing security limitations associated with cloud computing technology has the tendency to discourage many educational institutions from adopting cloud services. Therefore, there is need for all stakeholders particularly the cloud vendors to continuously upgrade cloud security system in order to effectively counter both existing and emerging cloud threats. This would go a long way to preserve the integrity and privacy of customers; increase clients" trust and patronage, and enhance safer cloud experience.