An Investigation towards Security Threats for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing, a disruptive technology of the recent era, is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources having its intrinsic potentiality to enhance collaboration, agility, scaling, 24x7 availability with immense opportunity for cost reduction through optimized and efficient computing. Its tremendous envision capability to cater components rapidly orchestrated, provisioned, implemented and decommissioned, scaling and on-demand utility-like model of allocation and consumption, is however, not free from some serious drawbacks due to its inherent security breach. The information security in cloud, which is comprised of network security and data security as well, has become a major challenge for the cloud developers and providers because of the problem of hacking and attack vectors launched by malicious users or intruders. A good number of attack vectors and threats have been identified responsible for the decline of the widespread of the cloud computing in the IT and ITes industries and a major thrust research area has been evolved in the current decade, particularly, to device and formalize the appropriate security metrics for the measurement of the impact of the varied attack vectors. This paper focuses on several attack vectors commonly encountered in the particular area of cloud security making the technology vulnerable and unpopular. As nobody in the industries or academia is willing to compromise with privacy and security whatever advantageous the technology is, cloud computing, being a value added service, with all its virtue, is facing a great challenge to the cloud service providers and users.