Concerns from Cloud Security Issues: Challenges and Open Problems

The Cloud has become a significant topic in computing; however, the trend has established a new range of security issues that need to be addressed. For example, the owners of data might be worried because the data and associated software are not under their control but rather possessed by the Cloud. In addition, the data owner may not be aware of where the data is geographically located at any particular time. So a question arises as to how secure is the data contained in the Cloud. To help address this question, clients of the Cloud should be given the ability to assess the effectiveness of the Cloud's security measures. Other concerns include unwarranted and unauthorized stoppage of clients' services in the Cloud, breach of security measures, and disruption to service availability. In this article, perspectives from Cloud computing practitioners are shown to help address clients concerns and bring about awareness of the measures put in place to ensure the security of the client services running in the Cloud. In addition, we have reviewed a number of the existing Cloud security approaches and techniques to put a systematic survey of the current security issues in the Cloud environment. Furthermore, we discuss challenges and open problems that these mechanisms face to be effective and efficient.