Review of solutions for securing end user data over cloud applications

There is an urgent need of solutions for end user data protection and privacy during the times when migrating from one cloud service provider to another. This paper reviews the challenges in cloud computing services regarding end user data, analyzing the issues and presented solutions to overcome them. The end user data required to be protected in four different ways ranging from usage data which is the information collected from computer systems, the second is the sensitive information on health and bank accounts, third is the personally identifiable information; information to identify an individual and finally is the unique device identity information that is uniquely traceable like IP addresses, unique hardware identities (media access control (MAC) address). By using solution paths such as digital keys, multi factor authentication and cloud aware applications. This paper identifies end users data security issues when using cloud computing services. The focus is directed to critical issues related to unauthorized access for integrity during data in transit. It can be addressed using public key cryptography or public key infrastructure (PKI) for confidentiality and data integrity of end user data over the cloud. Then for migrating from one cloud service provider to another, data security and privacy are addressed by cloud aware applications. Lastly, using multi factor authentication combined with network and application detection systems, intrusion detection systems and network traffic routing in case of cyber-attacks, can help in denial of service attack mitigation or prevent man in the middle and network snooping attacks in cloud computing.