Question

Describe the following cloud computing concepts:   

• Connectivity issues (as a business concern)

• Virtualization

• High availability

• Containerization

Describe the following cloud computing principles as it relates to cloud security:   

• Malicious service agent  

• Trusted attacker

• Traffic eavesdropping

• Overlapping trust boundaries

Answer 1

Ans: - Cloud Computing has become the most popular trend in industries as it provides on- demand availability for different resources online on the internet. We can store our data and also provide services to different clients using the cloud computing. It is now the fastest growing technology which is helping the companies and organizations to make their tasks easy.

Connectivity issues (as a business concern): - Connectivity issue can be due to network failure of any organization. Their own network system should be capable of handling the different cloud computing resources. Company may not have good network infrastructure that can cause the connectivity issue in network while using cloud services.

Company’s tools and application software not supporting the cloud-based services can also create the connectivity issue that can cause decrease in the growth of a company.

Cloud monitoring can be used to solve the connectivity issues in the network.

Virtualization: - Virtualization is the concept of creating the virtual devices and resources that can be shared among the multiple users. Creating a virtual operating system, server and storage devices etc. VM Ware and Virtual box are the real-life example of virtualization in which we can access windows, Linux, MacOS and other operating systems virtually on a single device.

High Availability: - High availability is the quality feature of the cloud computing which allows the users the access different components of the cloud services even some components get failed to respond. Cloud services should provide high uptime for their services even if the load on the server is difficult to handle. The high availability cloud services ensure more than 99% of uptime for their resources.

Containerization: - Containerization is a very powerful concept in cloud computing. In this method, the different software applications are delivered into small bundles that includes code with all of its packages and dependencies. So that numerous applications can be easily used with small storage and resources needed.

Docker is the example of the Containerization in cloud computing.

Malicious Service Agent: - It a threat for the cloud computing because it can disguise the traffic of the network in the cloud. Malicious service agents can get unauthorized access to the data which is being transmitted in the cloud and then corrupt that data or information. This agent may exist in the network as a service agent for the cloud services but it can maliciously corrupt the data with some code or logic.

Trusted attacker: - Trusted attacker pretend to be a trusted cloud consumer of cloud services and tries to share the cloud resources in that environment. They try to get access to the cloud credentials legally by becoming a trusted consumer. They can perform different attack on cloud services like denial of services, email spamming, phishing and accessing login credentials to attack on the cloud system.

Traffic Eavesdropping

Traffic eavesdropping is also a threat to the cloud security. When there is the transmission of data over the cloud by the consumer to the cloud service provider then malicious service agent try to get access to that data by becoming a trusted agent who needs that data for legit and useful purposes.

This attack cannot be easily identified as there is concept of confidentiality in cloud between the consumer and cloud service provide. So, malicious agent can take advantage of it to get access over the data.

Overlapping Trust Boundaries: -

When there are shared cloud computing resources between different cloud consumer and resources are being used by these consumers then the cloud service providers have to made some kind of trust boundaries. So, these trust boundaries between consumer and the service provider have overlapping trust boundaries. But if any malicious consumer tries to get access to the confidential information from the cloud then it can be a threat to the cloud service providers and also to the customers.