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Cloud Computing Environment and Security Challenges: A Review

Article in International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications · October 2017
DOI: 10.14569/IJACSA.2017.081025

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 (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
Vol. 8, No. 10, 2017

Cloud Computing Environment and Security

Challenges: A Review
Muhammad Faheem Mushtaq1, Urooj Akram1, Irfan Khan2, Sundas Naqeeb Khan1, Asim Shahzad1, Arif Ullah1
1
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology,
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM),
Johor, Malaysia
2
Directorate of Information Technology (IT),
Govt. Sadiq College Women University,
Bahawalpur, Pakistan

Abstract—Cloud computing exhibits a remarkable potential configurable computing resources to shared resources which
to offer cost-effective and more flexible services on-demand to the can be delivered and provisioned rapidly with minimum
customers over the network. It dynamically increases the managerial interaction [4].
capabilities of the organization without training new people,
investment in new infrastructure or licensing new software. The cloud is the collection of virtualized and inter-
Cloud computing has grown dramatically in the last few years connected computers that consists of parallel and distributed
due to the scalability of resources and appear as a fast-growing systems which can be dynamically presented and provisioned
segment of the IT industry. The dynamic and scalable nature of the computing resources based on some Service Level
cloud computing creates security challenges in their management Agreements (SLA) that is established by the settlement
by examining policy failure or malicious activity. In this paper, between the customers and service provider [5]. The
we examine the detailed design of cloud computing architecture advantages of using cloud computing are offering infinite
in which deployment models, service models, cloud components, computing resources, low cost, security controls, hypervisor
and cloud security are explored. Furthermore, this study protection, rapid elasticity, high scalability and fault tolerant
identifies the security challenges in cloud computing during the services with high performance. Many companies like
transfer of data into the cloud and provides a viable solution to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM, etc. developed the cloud
address the potential threats. The task of Trusted Third Party computing systems and provide a large amount of customers
(TTP) is introducing that ensure the sufficient security
by enhancing their services [6]. Moreover, there are significant
characteristics in the cloud computing. The security solution
barriers to adopting cloud computing like security issue
using the cryptography is specifically as the Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI) that operates with Single-Sign-On (SSO)
regarding the privacy, compliance and legal matters because it
and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) which ensure is relatively new computing model having a great deal of the
the integrity, confidentiality, availability, and authenticity uncertainty regarding the security of all levels such as host,
involved in communications and data. network, data levels, and application can be accomplished [7].
The management of data and services is an important concern
Keywords—Cloud computing; deployment models; service when the databases and application software are moves the
models; cloud security; trusted third party; cryptography cloud to the large data centers. It may arise many security
challenges regarding the use of cloud computing includes the
I. INTRODUCTION privacy and control, virtualization and accessibility
Cloud computing extends the information technology vulnerabilities, credential and identity management,
capabilities by increasing the capacity and adds abilities confidentiality, authentication of the respondent device and
dynamically without investing on large and expensive integrity [8], [9]. The increment in the adoption of cloud
infrastructure, licensing software, or training new personals. computing and the market maturity is growing steadily because
Among the several benefits, cloud computing provides a more the service providers ensure the complex security level,
flexible way to access the storage and computation resources compliance and regulatory. In part this growth, the cloud
on demand. In the last few years, different business companies services will deliver the increased flexibility and cost savings
are increasingly understanding that by tapping the cloud [10].
resources and gaining fast access, they are able to reduce their Cloud computing is authorized through the virtualization
initial business cost by paying only the resources they used technology in which the host system operates an application
rather than the need of potentially large investment (owning referred as a hypervisor that generates one or more Virtual
and maintenance) on infrastructure. Rapid deployment, cost Machines (VM) and it faithfully simulates the physical
reduction, and minimal investment are the major factors to computers. These simulations can be able to operate any
employ cloud services that drive many companies [1]-[3]. software from operating system to the end-user application
Cloud computing is explained by National Institute of Standard [11]. The number of physical devices lies in hardware level
and Technology (NIST). It is a model to enable convenient, that includes hard drives, processors and network devices
ubiquitous and on-demand network access that is the which are placed in the data centers. It is independent of the

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geographical location that is responsible for processing and The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2
storage as needed. The effective management of the servers is summarizes the detailed design of cloud computing
performed by the combination of the virtualization layer, architecture. Section 3 explains the security challenges of the
software layer, and the management layer. Virtualization layer Cloud computing. Section 4 describes the analysis and
is utilized to provide the necessary cloud components of rapid discussion based on the security challenges identified in the
elasticity, resource pooling, and location independent. Also, it cloud computing environment. Section 5 presents the
is an essential element of cloud implementation. The ability to conclusions and future work of this research.
implement security rules and monitoring throughout the cloud
is done by the management layer. II. CLOUD COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE
This research explains the overview of cloud computing NIST is responsible for providing security in the cloud
architecture as: 1) cloud deployment models; 2) cloud service computing environment and developing standards and
model; 3) cloud basic characteristics; 4) cloud security. guidelines which shows a valuable contribution that offers a
Security concerns of different companies with the growing better understanding of cloud services and computing
importance of cloud resources are taking into account when the technologies [2], [12]. Cloud computing architecture
data migrate to the modernize cloud systems, advances in summarize as the four deployment models: public cloud,
business needs and the impact of services offered by the private cloud, community cloud, and the hybrid cloud. The
different organizations to increase the market. Moreover, this deployment models represent the way that the computing
study focuses on to identifying the security issues and infrastructure delivers the cloud services can be employed. The
challenges in cloud computing that considers the threads, three cloud service models or delivery models are available for
vulnerabilities, requirements, risks and discusses the security the customer: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a
solutions and suggestion for the cloud computing. Also, Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). There are
discusses the Trusted Third Party (TTP) in the cloud different levels of security required for these service models in
computing environment by enabling the trust and cryptography the cloud environment. The wide range of services considered
that ensure the integrity, authenticity and confidentiality of data in cloud basic characteristic layer that can be used all over the
by addressing specific security vulnerabilities. The suggested internet. The cloud service provider is corresponded to provide
solution to the horizontal level services which are available for services, resource allocation management, and security. The
the concerned entities that basically maintain trust to realize the architecture explains the five basic components which consist
security mesh. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) operates with of services that are used in the cloud. The cloud security is the
Single-Sign-On (SSO) and Lightweight Directory Access very important and complex task when the data transfer or
Protocol (LDAP) and is utilized to securely authenticate and shared resources to the cloud within the client-server
identify the concerned entities. architecture. The architecture of cloud computing is shown in
Fig. 1 and details are discussed as follows:

Fig. 1. Cloud computing architecture.

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A. Cloud Deployment Models for the server administrator, virtualization specialist, and
The cloud computing model has three deployment models network specialist. Virtual application and scalable resources
that can be particularly used to represent the cloud service provided by the cloud service provider are pooled together and
models and it explains the nature and purpose of the cloud. The it is available for customers to use and share. In private cloud,
deployment models can be shown in Fig. 2 and classified as it is easier to address the relationship between the service
follows: provider and customer because the infrastructure operated and
owned by the same organization [14]. It employs the
capabilities of cloud management software to ensure reliable
delivery service and integrity of the external resources.
3) Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud is referred as the
combination of two or more cloud deployment models that
can be either public, private or community clouds which
remains the unique entities but are bound together [15]. The
importance of hybrid cloud usually offers extra resources
when the high demand from the customer and for instance it is
enabled to migrate some computation jobs from private to
public cloud. It is well organized and allow different entities
to access data over the internet because it offers more secure
control of the applications and data. It provides a benefit over
different deployment models and can be internally and
Fig. 2. Cloud deployment models. externally hosted. Hybrid cloud gets more popularity and
became a dominant model. The main reason is that it has the
1) Public Cloud: A public cloud represents the cloud ability to take advantage of cost-saving, scalability in
hosting and owned by the service provider whereby the client elasticity that public cloud may provide, allow control
and resource provider have service level agreement [4], [13]. flexibility when it needed.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, VMware, IBM, Sun and 4) Community Cloud: Community cloud is referred as the
Rackspace are some examples of cloud service provider. The organizations shared its cloud infrastructure among the
plateform is designed in the form of generalized computing customers having similar interest or concerns like a policy, the
that holds the generic type of customer demand. The resources security requirements, mission and compliance consideration.
are made available to the public and easily accessible. We say that the several organizations or a third party are
Multiple entities are involved in operating public cloud and operated, controlled, shared and handled the resources of
resource are public for the customers which makes them community cloud [16]. In case of the third party like Siemens
difficult to protect from malicious attacks. It contains some have IT services and solutions that set up a media cloud for
concerns over privacy, data access and security for customers the media industry. It tends to be more rare and specialized.
because it is outside the firewall. It is less secure than the The cloud infrastructure of community cloud is shared and
other deployment models and suited for a small and medium owned by different organizations such as research groups,
business that may not have to configure servers and purchase together with work of companies and government
capital resources. organizations.
2) Private Cloud: The cloud infrastructure is managed and
B. Cloud Service Models
maintained by the single organization that compromises
multiple customers. If any organization set up their own Cloud computing architecture has a set of services which
private cloud and recently create their own servers having are used to access the configurable computing resources
(applications, storage, servers, networks and services) on
physical hardware servers that put virtualization layer top on
demand, dynamically scalable, virtualized and multi-tenant that
them then they would make resources available only offers a self-service over the internet. It provides the flexibility
internally. So, their application can deploy to their own to handle the rapidly changing customer requirements and
physical control server, they don’t need to go Microsoft or gives a reliable solution for customer demands. There are many
Amazon servers. They will set up their own infrastructure. It service providers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Rackspace,
can ensure the physical security and more secure as compared etc.) that offer services to any of these models such as IaaS,
to the public cloud because of its specific internal exposure. PaaS and SaaS. The classification of cloud service models is
Private cloud is the only access to operate by the designated important to figure out the particular service model that fulfills
stakeholder and organization. However, the cost is and accomplish its roles. The service model can be represented
significantly higher because expertise and training are needed in Fig. 3 and the details are discussed as follows:

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software development lifecycle management (Planning,

design, develop an application, deployment, testing and
maintenance). The abilities offer to the customer or developers
are deployed the developed applications onto the cloud
infrastructure. The customer has only access to control the
deployed applications and configurations of possible hosting
environment instead of control the servers, storage, network
Fig. 3. Cloud service models. and operating system. PaaS model worked similar to the IaaS
but it offers the additional level of rented functionality and the
1) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS offers the customers using the services of PaaS model transfer more
virtualized computing resources over the internet and deals costs from hardware investment to the operational expense
with the hardware infrastructure such as servers, storage, [22]. The vendor of PaaS offers some services for the
processor, data center, network and various other application developers:
infrastructure resources as a service where the user able to run
 The standards of the application based on developer’s
and deploy arbitrary software. This infrastructure can
requirements.
significantly minimize initial cost of the companies to
 Logging, code instrumentation and reporting.
purchase computing hardware such as network devices,
 Redundancy and security.
servers and processing power that allows the companies to
 A virtual development environment.
major focus on core competencies instead of worrying
 The configuration of toolkits for the virtual development
regarding management and provisioning of infrastructure or
environment.
own data centers [17]-[19]. The service providers for IaaS
 Management interface and API.
have hosted user applications and handle different jobs like
 Multi-tenancy.
resiliency planning and system maintenance backup. It has a
 Auto-provisioning and scalability of the underlying
major focus to improve the security in areas like VM monitor,
infrastructure.
intrusion detection, firewall and prevention (IPS/IDS). IasS
 Built-in channel distribution for public application
model includes storage, web services, server hosting, VM,
developer.
backup and recovery. The platform of IaaS provides the highly
scalable resources which can be fixed on demand. It makes the The well-known vendors for the PaaS model are: Microsoft
plateform more suited for workloads having experimental, Azure, Apprenda, Stackato, VMware, Google App Engine and
temporary or change unexpectedly. Furthermore, the NYSE Capital. PaaS model includes databases, directory
services, business intelligence, testing and development tools.
characteristic includes the desktop virtualization, dynamic
VM is employed in PaaS to act as a catalyst and it required to
scaling, administrative tasks automation and policy-based protect against the cloud malware attacks. It is important to
services. The customer has control over deployed applications, include the valid authentication checks during the data transfer
storage, operating system and limited control are possible to across the overall network channels and need to maintain the
select networking components like host firewall rather than integrity of the applications. The security of PaaS can be
the control or manage the cloud infrastructure. The well- compromised during the deployment of customer application
known vendors for the IaaS are VMware, Hyper-V, or runtime of application and has challenges when underlying
Terremark, Amazon EC2, Dropbox, Sun Microsystems infrastructure security, lifecycle development and third-party
services and OpenStack to provide services to the customers relationship.
and build their private or public cloud. Technically, the market 3) Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS model is the
of IaaS is relatively less movement of entry because it collection of remotely hosted applications that are made
required a large investment to build the cloud infrastructure. available by the service provider for the customers on demand
The network services provided by public cloud in terms of on the internet [4]. It has dominant cloud market as underlying
Domain Name System (DNS) and load balancing. The DNS technology that supports service oriented architecture and web
network service employs the domain name with IP addressing services and still the market is growing rapidly. SaaS model
or hierarchical naming for the network identification and the offers the functionality of the business software to enterprise
load balancing offers a single access point to different servers users at very low cost instead of providing facility to develop
that are working behind it. The load balancer used specific software or application. The vendors of SaaS models offer
balancing techniques to distributes the network traffic between some core benefits are as follows:
the multiple servers.
2) Platform as a service (PaaS): PaaS is the middleware  Easier administration.
of the service model and it provides the services in the form of  Universal accessibility.
programs, framework, integrated development environment,  Easily collaboration.
and development tools hosted on the server provider [20],  Software compatibility.
[21]. It delivers a service to the developers that provides the  Auto patch and updates management.

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It allows the enterprises to get similar benefits of the or firmware, software that allows to run and creates multiple
internally operated commercially licensed software. However, virtual machines on single hardware host [25]. It is an
still most of the enterprise users are not comfortable due to the important module of virtualization that monitors and manage
deficiency in the visibility regarding their stored data in the the variety of Operating Systems (OS) which can share
cloud is secure or not [23]. Therefore, security concerns of
virtualized resources of hardware e.g. Windows, Linux and
enterprise addressing appear as the emerging challenge in the
adoption of SaaS applications within the clouds. The security Mac OS that can run on the single physical system. The
concerns about the application vulnerabilities, system hypervisor can be classified into type 1 hypervisor and type 2
availability and insider breaches that bring the loss of sensitive hypervisor. The type 1 hypervisor can directly operate in host
information or data. SaaS model includes virtual desktop, system hardware such as Oracle VM server for x86, Microsoft
email, office automation, business apps, document and content Hyper-V and Xen. The type 2 hypervisor operates the guest
management. The well-known vendors of SaaS service operating from the host OS which offers virtualization service
providers are the Salesforce and Google App that are the like memory management and I/O device support such as a
collection of remote computing services. Virtual box, VMware player, and VMware workstation. To
IaaS provides greater customer or tenant over the security determine the right selection of hypervisor that meets the need
than PaaS and SaaS. While the PaaS infrastructure provides using the performance metrics such as guest memory,
better extensibility and customer control and the SaaS model is maximum host, a virtual processor supported and the CPU
depending on integrated functionality with minimum customer overhead. Moreover, to identify the hypervisor capabilities by
control and extensibility. The security pressure of SaaS model verifying the guest OS on each hypervisor supports [25], [26].
varies on the cloud provider due to the degree of abstraction. 2) Virtualization: Virtualization allows to share the
Mostly large enterprise will like to create hybrid cloud physical instance resources by multiple customers or
environment with several private and public clouds having a
organizations. It helps to make one physical resource that is
possibility to mix community cloud into it. Some clouds will
offer different enhancement in terms of security, performance, same as the multiple virtual resources [27]-[29]. Virtualization
optimized pricing [24]. Furthermore, the optimized outcome is splits the services and resources from the underlying physical
achieved by the enterprises through the deployment of an delivery environment. Virtualization is used to consolidate the
application with suitable cloud models. The well-known resources (network resources, storage, processor and operating
vendor used cloud service model with respective deployment system) into a virtual environment that offers several benefits
models are shown in Table 1. such as IT responsiveness and flexibility, reduce hardware
cost by consolidation and workload optimization. However, it
TABLE I. VENDER USED CLOUD DEPLOYMENT AND SERVICE MODELS
creates new challenges from attacker to secure the extra layer
of VM due to more interconnection complexity and entry
Service Infrastructure point increases using virtualization. It is important for the
Platform as a Software as a
/Deployment as a Service
Models (IaaS)
Service (PaaS) Service (SaaS) physical machine security because any problem may effect the
other.
3) Storage: Customers use cloud storage over the network
VMware, Microsoft Office 365, in which the data is backed up, managed and maintained
Rackspace, Azure, QuickBooks remotely [9], [16]. The service provider major focus to
Public Cloud
Amazon EC2 CloudFoundry.com, online,
Google App Engine Salesforce.com improve the customer concerns regarding security capabilities
such as authentication and encryption into their services. The
vendors need to ensure that the data is secure, available and
OpenStack,
Hyper-V,
safe. Storage in cloud depends on the virtualized infrastructure
Private Cloud Stackato, Apprenda Cisco WebEx with scalability, instant elasticity, metered resources, and
VMware,
CloudStack accessible interfaces. The public cloud storage offers a multi-
tenant environment of storage that is appropriate for the
Rackspace, Cloud Foundry, unstructured data. While the private cloud service offers
Hybrid Cloud Rackspace
Custom Custom
dedicated storage environment that is protected behind
Community
NYSE Capital NYSE Capital Salesforce
customers or organization’s firewall. The hybrid cloud service
Cloud provides more data deployment options and business
flexibility because it mix the private and public cloud services.
C. Cloud Basic Component The benefits of using cloud storage are information
The cloud computing is deployed on the basic components management, time deployment, and total cost of ownership.
and these components consist of wide range of services which 4) Multi-tenancy: Multi-tenancy environment contain a
can be used in the overall internet. In this study, some single instance of application software that can serve the
important components are considered as follows:
multiple users or customers. The customers can only share
1) Hypervisor: The Hypervisor is referred to as Virtual applications or resources rather than to observe or share each
Machine Monitor (VMM) or manager is computer hardware other data in the execution environment [30]. Each customer is

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referred as the tenant and it may give the ability for the cloud have no longer owns the data because it will transfer
customizing the application to some extent such as user through the third party that means the privacy setting of data is
interface color, but they are not authorized to customize the beyond the control of service provider or enterprises [33].
code of applications. SaaS service providers can run one part Customers need to ensure the quality of service and security of
of the application with the corresponding database and offer the data in the cloud. The security concerns about storage are
web access or service to multiple tenants. The data of multiple data leakage, BYOD (Bring Your Own Data), snooping, cloud
tenants or customers is stored in the same database which credentials and key management.
effects the data leakage risk between this customer is high. 2) Cloud Infrastructure Security: Cloud computing
The provider needs to ensure the security policies in which the enabling the distributed workforce and provides many benefits
data keep separate between the multiple tenants. The outcome for the customers but it is essential to learn how to operate the
of multi-tenancy is the optimal utilization of data storage and cloud infrastructure that ensures and verify the secure
hardware mechanism. Multi-tenancy in cloud computing has deployment of services, storage of data, communication and
broadened because it get advantages to romote access and safe operation through administration [21]. With the rapid
virtualization for new service models. adoption of cloud services, the concerns (privacy, security and
5) Cloud Network: cloud networking is used to describe reliability) have emerged as potential barriers. Information
the access of network resources from the centralized service security professionals usually define the security guideline,
provider using the internet [31]. In this cloud, network and rules and practice of cloud infrastructure of the organization at
computing resources can be shared among the customers. The the application, host and network levels.
secure networking infrastructure is required for the efficiently 3) Software Security: The cloud provider required to
manage and build the cloud storage. Cloud network needs an protect their applications or software from internal and
internet connection which is same with the virtual private external thread throughout from design to production in their
network that allows the customer to securely access files, entire life cycle [34]. It is important to define the security
applications, printers, etc. The cloud network technology in process and policies about the software that enables the
the form of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) having a business instead of introducing other risk and it poses
number of networking access devices and switches that can be challenges for the customers and the cloud provider. Software
deployed over the shared wide area. security can be handled or defeat by implementing bugs,
design flaws, buffer overflow, error handling agreements.
D. Cloud Security
4) Cloud Network Security: A cloud service provider has
Cloud security is the set of control-based policies, the responsibility to allow the only valid network traffic and
compliance and technologies designed to deploy the protection
block all malicious traffic. Cloud providers are not shared the
of applications, data and infrastructure associated with the
cloud. Cloud is used by more organizations and associated internal network infrastructure like the access routers and
providers for operating data have become the priority to switches employ to connect cloud VMs to the provider
contract for proper security and potentially vulnerable areas. network. The customer concerned on internal network attacks
Cloud computing security is the major concerns when shared which include 1) leakage of confidential data; 2) unauthorized
resources, access control, privacy and identity management modification; and 3) denial of service or availability. Network
needs [32]. Some of the concerns are discussed as follows: security has concerns from both internal and external attacks
 The data store in the cloud can be deliberately disclosed because the attacker may legally authorize from another part
by the cloud providers, employees and its contractors. of the network and attack can occur either physical or virtual
 Cloud-based data may be incorrectly modified and network [34].
vulnerable to delete (lost accidentally) by the service III. SECURITY CHALLENGES IN CLOUD COMPUTING
provider.
The applications of cloud services are operating in the
 In the public network, the data may be possibly cloud computing infrastructures by using the internet or
accessible through the insecure APIs and protocols. internal network. The concept of trust in the organization can
 The resources in the cloud are typically shared with be referred as the customers assure the capabilities of the
different tenants that may be attacked. organization that it provides the required services reliably and
Although, the security of data is in-fact challenging when accurately. Trust in cloud computing environment based on the
data transfer to the cloud. This section briefly discusses the selected cloud deployment models in which the applications
security concerns as follows: are delegated and outsourced to the control of the owner. Trust
has required an efficient and effective security policy in the
1) Cloud Storage Security: The popularity and adoption of traditional architecture that addressed the functional constraints
cloud storage is rising that produce many security challenges and flows between them [35], [36]. External systems access the
for the cloud providers as well as for the customers. IT experts constraints that attack the programs which effect the access or
to warn that every kind of technologies even virtual or control on the customer data. In cloud deployment models, the
community or public clouds assigned control to the
physical, it contains inherent risks when using file-sharing
organization that owned the cloud infrastructure. When the
applications and cloud storage. Customers store their data in

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public cloud-deployed, the control allows the owner of the essential to ensure only the valid customers can access or
infrastructure to strictly apply adequate security policy which interact with the data due to increasing the number of access
ensures the appropriate security activities performed that points and customers in cloud computing environment.
reduces the threats and risks. Basically, the cloud security is
associated to trust on computing and services employed by the The data integrity involves the three main entities: 1) a
infrastructure owner. The cloud infrastructure in private cloud cloud storage provider to whom outsourced the data; 2) owner
is managed and operated within the premises of private of data outsource his data; and 3) auditor who ensures the data
organization in which no additional security challenges integrity. The auditor may be the owner of data or he can
introduced, so the trust remained within the organization. It is assign responsibility to a third party [40]. The process of data
believed that transfer of data or any association of organization integrity scheme defined as in two phases and is shown in
or systems to the outside organization that opening a way to Fig. 4. The preprocessing phase includes the preprocessed data
gain unauthorized access to the information resources [37]. and generated some additional metadata. After that outsources
the data and metadata to the cloud storage provider. The
Cloud computing allows the providers to run, deploy and verification phase includes the auditor send a challenge request
develop applications that can be work rapidly (performance), to the cloud storage provider that generates possession proof
scalability, maintainability and reliability without any concerns with the data and metadata, and offers it to the auditor. The
about the locations and properties of the underlying verification of proof done by the auditor that ensures the data
infrastructure. The consequences to avail these properties of integrity is intact.
the cloud when we store or transfer private data of different
companies and get services from the cloud service providers by
employing the internet that arises the privacy and security
issues. For the purpose of securing cloud Information Systems
(IS) which involve to identifying the challenges and threats that
need to be addressed using the appropriate countermeasures
implementation. Cloud computing infrastructure needs the
assessment of risk in areas such as integrity, confidentiality,
privacy, auditing, reliability and availability. Essentially, the
security has major aspects of integrity, confidentiality and
availability that are utilized in designing the adequate security
system. These major security aspects are required to secure the
data, hardware and software resources. Furthermore, discusses
the Trusted Third Party (TTP) in the cloud computing
environment through enabling trust and cryptography [38]. The
cryptography is used to ensure the authenticity, confidentiality
and integrity of data by trying to address the specific security
vulnerabilities. Third parties or Cloud providers exhibit the
trust of customers with specific quality, operational and ethical Fig. 4. Data integrity scheme.
characteristics, and it comprises the minimal risk factor
acknowledgment. TTP in the IS which is offering scalable end- The timely identification of any data deletion or corruption
to-end security services that depend on the standards and by using the data integrity scheme and takes necessary
suitable in separate administrative domains, specialization measures for the recovery of data. The data integrity scheme
sectors, and geographical areas. TTP in distributed cloud contains some design challenges in the cloud that are discussed
environment appears as the ideal security facilitator the as follows:
customers or systems are belong to different domains without
the knowledge or information of each other is needed to 1) Computation eficiency: In data integrity scheme, the
establish secure interactions. The security challenges of cloud data can be preprocessed before outsource into the cloud
computing infrastructure that can be considered in detail as storage server. The generation of metadata from original data
follows: similar to the cloud storage server. This processing creates
A. Integrity overhead while performing may effect the computation
efficiency. The preprocessing phase for small dataset does not
Data integrity in cloud computing is the preservation of
matter the computation efficiency but it has a significant effect
data that is stored in cloud server to verify the data is not
modified or lost by employing the services of the third party. by using large datasets. In the server end, the computation cost
Organizations can achieve more confidence to prevent system of the proof of possession limits on how regularly the
and data integrity from unauthorized access [39]. They provide customer can verify or ensure the outsourced data integrity
such mechanisms having greater visibility to determine what or [41]. Data integrity scheme used primitives as metadata that
who may modify the system information or data that also effects on the computation time.
potentially affects their integrity. Authorization mechanism is 2) Communication efficiency: The communication
utilized to determine the system what or which level of access efficiency can be described three major aspects in the data
to a specifically authorized customer should have to protected integrity scheme: 1) data owner have challenge request for the
resources controlled through the system. Authorization is proof of possession; 2) the challenge response from the cloud

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storage server for the verification of possession; and  In the data leak attack, the extraction of stored data by
3) overhead occur during the initial transfer of data along the the attacker during the proofing protocol with
metadata. The communication overhead in dynamic data that wiretapping technique.
comprises the updates verification. The metadata utilized the
The data integrity schemes may find difficult or fail to
primitives have effects on the communication cost. Algebraic identify the data corruption timely that consequences an
signatures offer the communication efficiency by using the unrecoverable damage. The cloud provider ensured to maintain
low network bandwidth during response time and challenge data accuracy and integrity. The cloud computing models
request [41]. The size of response and challenge is usually explain numerous threats containing the sophisticated insider
small by using the Hill cipher and offering the efficient attack on the data attributes. Software integrity protects the
communication. software from the unauthorized modification by intentionally
3) Reduced disk I/O: The overhead in metadata access and or unintentionally. Cloud service providers implementing a set
block access for the generation of proof on the cloud storage of APIs or software interfaces used to help the customers to
server have derived the efficiency of disk I/O in the data interact and manage the cloud services. Moreover, the cloud
services security based on the interface’s security because the
integrity scheme. For the purpose of generating proof to
unauthorized customer may gain control of them and change or
access all blocks that impact on the efficiency of the data delete the customer data [47], [48]. Administrator or software’s
integrity scheme and scheme become impractical for owner is responsible to protect the software integrity. Network
employing large datasets. The overall efficiency of disk I/O and hardware integrity is required to address the cloud provider
can influence on following parameters [42], [43]. and protect the underlying hardware from fabrication,
modification and theft. Cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS and
 The size of the disk in data integrity scheme either SaaS) are the fundamental task to keep the data integrity and
employ variable length block size or fixed. The size of usually offer massive data procession ability. The challenges
the block is small, then the larger the blocks in the file associated with the data storage in the cloud when the solid-
that will influence the preprocessing time in metadata state disks (tapes or hard disk drives) capacity are increased
tags generation for all blocks. and unable to keep pace with the growth of data. So, the
 Due to the variable length of data/metadata that cannot vendors need to scale up the storage by increasing the space of
be accessed directly a particular block index. It will solid-space disk (hard drives or tapes) that may consequence
impact on the disk I/O to increases the process of the high possibility of either the data corruption, data loss, disk
verification, so the time increases of generating a proof. failure or the node failure. Furthermore, the capacity of the
 The parameter challenge in a number of blocks has an solid-state disk is increasing more and more, while it may not
get much faster in terms of data access.
influence on both the I/O cost and computation cost. The
large blocks in a challenge that leads in proof generating B. Confidentiality
time increased. Confidentiality refers to keeping the customer’s data secret
in the cloud computing system and only the authorized
4) Security: The concerns while designing the data
customers or systems can able to access the data [49]. Cloud
integrity schemes because they are vulnerable to different computing provides (e.g. applications and its infrastructures)
attacks [44]-[46]. The possible attacks against the schemes are are basically in the public clouds have more threads on the
discussed as follows: systems or applications are exposed as compare the hosted in
the private data centers. So, it is the fundamental requirement
 The tag forgery attack is possible through malicious
to keep the customer data secret ever the increasing number of
cloud storage provider that try to hide the data damage applications, customers and devices involved. The vendors of
of customers and avoid the auditing challenge. cloud computing are extensively adopted the two basic
 In the data deletion attack, the cloud storage provider approaches such as cryptography and physical isolation to
may proceed the challenge through generating a legal achieve the confidentiality [50]. The cloud computing provides
proof of possession with the tags in which the original services and data that are transmitted through the public
data may have entirely deleted. network and it cannot achieve physical isolation. While virtual
 In the replace attack, the cloud storage provider may LAN and middle boxes network such as packet filters and
replace the data blocks of deleted or corrupted pair and firewall should be deployed to accomplish virtual physical
respectively tags using another valid pair as the response isolation. VPN cubed released by CohesiveFT to offers a
of challenge with that deceive the verifier. security boundary for the IT infrastructure although it is inside
the single, multiple or hybrid cloud data center ecosystems.
 The pollution attack defines the correct data is employed Vertica offers VPN and firewall to secure its database and
by the dishonest server in the generation of response deploys on the Amazon EC2. When the Amazon EC2 has
against a challenge but it offers corrupted or useless provisioned the Vertica database and offers customers to full
blocks in repair phase. root access that helps customers can secure the systems. They

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create a VPN connection among the enterprise customers and provide separated storage virtualization, memory virtualization,
Vertica to the cloud instance and firewall is set for the outside machine/CPU virtualization etc. where the large number of
world. Confidentiality is also enhancing by encrypted the data commodity PCs hosted. This is the reason the service providers
before transfer into cloud storage and TC3 is successfully can split resources (memory, capacity, storage, CPU cycle) on
employed in this approach. Numerous concerns arises demand from Amazon based on usage expense in the form of
regarding the issues of application security and privacy, multi- each unit. Currently, the vendors of the cloud are offering
tenancy, and data remanence [51]. platforms and infrastructures depend on the VM (Skytab,
Amazon) provide the ability to filter and block the traffic based
1) Multi-Tenancy: Multi-tenancy refers to the on port and IP address to secure systems but these services are
characteristics of cloud resources that shared including the not equal to the network security controls in mostly cloud
data, memory, networks and programs. Cloud computing is enterprises.
like the business model where the multiple customers can
Most cloud vendors (Google, Amazon) provide geographic
access same shared resources at the application level, host
redundancy in their cloud and hopefully allowing high
level, and network level. Multi-tenancy is similar to multi- availability on a single provider. The cloud system is capable
tasking that shares some common processing resources like to carry operations even in the security breaches possibilities or
CPU and it present number of confidentiality and privacy authorities misbehave [52]-[54]. Cloud service shows a heavy
threats. reliance on the network and infrastructure resources available
2) Data Remanence: The data is represented in residual at any time.
that can be unintentionally removed or erased due to the lack
The information system design used to verify the identities
of hardware separation among different customers and virtual of many systems that share mutual essential security
separation of the logical drives on a single cloud requirements and determine the particular demands for
infrastructure, it may lead the unintentionally disclose the information security and data protection. The multiple
private data. customer distributed environment suggests security challenges
3) Application Security and Privacy: Data confidentiality based on which level of user operates physical, virtual or
is associated with the user authentication. To protect the application is shown in Table 2. The objectives of distributed
customer’s account from hackers is a large problem of system security are as follows:
controlling the access of the objects including software,  To ensure the data confidentiality among the
devices and memory. The electronic authentication established participating systems.
the confidence of customer identities. If the customer used  When add or remove resources on a physical level then
weak authentication to account can lead to an unauthorized maintain the exactly same security level.
access to the cloud. In the cloud computing environment, the  Make sure that there is no data leakage among different
customer needed to trust the applications offered by the applications during the separation of processes and data
organization that is handled and maintained the customer data in the cloud at the virtual level.
in a secure manner. The possibilities of unauthorized access  To maintain or manage the integrity provided by the
by the use of vulnerable applications or weak identification services such as correct operations and confidentiality.
that create the issue of data privacy and confidentiality.  To provide the appropriate secure networks among the
C. Availability non- open systems world.
Availability in cloud computing including applications and  To authenticate the different communicating customer's
its infrastructure is to ensure that the authorized customers can identities and if necessary the data delivery and origin
access the property of system at all time on demand. Cloud for the purposes of banking to ensure the non-
computing models (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) allows its customers repudiation.
to access the services and applications from anyplace at any  To ensure the availability of data or systems
time. Vendors of cloud computing offers the cloud platform communicated among the participating systems.
and infrastructure that is based on VM. The Amazon web  The integrity of data or systems is maintained by
services offer S3, EC2 that is based on VM called Skytap and preventing any modification or loss from unauthorized
Xen provides virtual lab management application depends on access between the participating systems communicated.
the hypervisor (Xen, VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V). For
example, Xen virtual machine offered by Amazon is able to

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TABLE II. DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM SECURITY REQUIREMENT AND THREATS

Cloud Level Physical Level Virtual Level Application Level

Cloud Services Physical datacenter IaaS, PaaS SaaS
Developers deploy software on the End user subscribes the services provides by
Owner owns the cloud infrastructure that
Users infrastructure of the cloud that applies to the cloud provider that applies to the
applies to the organization or customer
organization or customer organization or customer
 Virtual cloud Protection
 Software security
 Cloud control management security
 Protection of network resources  Protection of data from exposure
 Access control
Security  Network protection  Privacy in multi-tenant environment
 Communication and application
Requirements  Legal use of cloud infrastructure  Service availability
security
 Security and reliability of hardware  Communication protection
 Security of data (transit/ rest/
 Access control
remanence)
 Network exposure  Privacy breach
 Misuse of cloud infrastructure
 Session hijacking  Network exposure
 Hardware modification or interruption
 Software interruption or modification  Interception
or stealing
 Connection flooding  Analysis of traffic flow
Security Threats  Network attacks
 Programming flaws  Data interruption
 DDOS
 Impersonation  Session hijacking
 Natural disasters
 DDOS  Data modification at transit or rest
 Connection flooding
 Traffic flow analysis  Impersonation

D. Trusted Third Party (TTP)

Trusted third party in cryptography helps to facilitate the cross-organization. In SSO environment, the user has not
interaction among the two parties and reviews all crucial required to entering the password repeatedly to access multiple
operations among them. The cloud computing environment resources over the network. SSO is deployed with PKI that
required the TTP services that exhibits to establish the essential enhance the authentication and authorization process of the
trust level and offers an ideal solution to maintain the whole infrastructure between the evident technical issues due
authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of communication to it assured the sufficient level of the usability. The TTP can
and data. TTP can produce the trusted security domain with the depend on following methods are defined as follows:
specifically addresses the loss or missing of the traditional 1) Client-Server Authentication: The certification
security boundary. It is an impartial organization which authority needs to verify the entities or systems that are
delivers the confidence of business by technical and
involved in interaction with the cloud computing environment
commercial security features to electronic transactions [38].
TTP services are underwritten and offered along with the which includes to certifying virtual servers, network devices,
technical but also through the structural, financial and legal environment users, and physical infrastructure servers. The
means. It is operationally linked with the chain of trust certification authority of PKI develops the required strong
(certificate paths) for the purpose of providing a web trust that credentials for the virtual or physical entities that are involved
establishing the concept of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). in cloud and security domain are build with specific
PKI offers legally acceptable and technically sound mean to boundaries. The availability of strongest authentication
implement data integrity, data confidentiality, authorization, process in distributed environments is the digital signature that
strong authentication, and non-repudiation. In a distributed is the combination of Ldap and SSO which ensure the user
information system, PKI gets benefits from coupling through flexibility and mobility [56]. The authentication of customers
the directory that is a set of objects having same attributes that
is performed transparently and automatically to other devices
are organized in hierarchical and logical manner. Lightweight
directory access protocol has become the vital protocol that or servers over the network by signing private key.
supports to access PKI directory services for the Certificate Cloud computing platform become enormous in which
Revocation List (CRL) and employed by web services for the every service need secure authorization and authentication
authentication [55]. PKI is coupled with directory can be process. Among the conceptual boundaries of organization
utilized to distribute: 1) certificate status information (CRL); outsourced or own services become fuzzy, the adoption of
2) application certificate such as end-user certificate need to required SSO solution is critical. Sibboleth is the middleware
obtain using email before the transfer of encrypted message; open source software that offers SSO within or across the
and 3) private key, If the users do not use similar machine organizational boundaries and trust on third party or cloud
every day then the portability is needed in the environment. provider to share the information like user and named attributes
The directory contains the encrypted secret or private key are [56]. Authorization process can be achieved after the
decrypted using the password given by customer at the remote successful authentication in which customer exchange his
workstation. attribute without worried about the disclosure of personal
information in the resource server.
PKI are used with the Single-Sign-On (SSO) mechanism
that can be ideal for cloud computing environment, where 2) Low or high-level confidentiality: Transmission of data
customers navigate among the abundance of the boundaries of across the network is a challenge due to its continuously rising

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the threats of data interruption or modification. Due to the A number of services are hosted by the cloud infrastructure,
deficiency in traditional physical connection, the complexity so the several applications are transferred to the virtual server
increases in cloud computing environment that it required not and each required their own certificate for the SSL
only protection toward cloud traffic but additionally among communication. The application provider needs his own
certificate for the encryption and decryption of application data
the cloud hosts. PKI allows by implementing SSL or IPSec
and authentication for secure communications in the cloud. A
protocol for the secure communications. IPSec enables to send digital certificate is used by the owner of hardware
or receive the protected packets such as UDP, TCP, ICMP, infrastructure to communicate security among the virtual
etc. without any modification and offers authenticity and servers and devices. Key management is the challenging issue
confidentiality based on the requirement [38], [57]. IPSec in cloud infrastructure as the virtualization services are
customer can authenticate themselves with the PKI certificate concealing the representation of the location of physical key
to enchance scalability due to the earlier transmitted of trusted storage and disable the traditional protection mechanism. In
CA certificate. SSL protocol enables the interface among this case, the key protection by deploying the temper proof
applications with end-to-end encryption and TCP/IP protocols devices such as customer smart card that is coupled with
offer encrypted communication channel and authentication hardware security module as a component of virtual
deployment. The solution for this problem is addressed with
between the client-server. Communication is needed to protect
cryptography by PKI that provides and ensures the integrity,
hosts, customers and host-to-host due to the unique confidentiality and authentication of the communication and
characteristics of cloud computing. In this regard, SSL and data involved. In the cloud environment, TTP ensures the
IPSec are chosen based on the security requirement and specific security characteristics. While it realizes a trust mesh
diverse needs. among the entities involved forming cloud federations. The
3) Cryptographic data separation: The protection of solution of the problem to the horizontal level services which
sensitive data is essential in the cloud computing environment are available for the concerned entities that basically maintain
that established as a crucial factor in the successful SaaS trust to realize the security mesh. This approach utilized the
model deployment. Cryptographic separating of the data, SSO technology, LDAP directories, and PKI cryptography to
computations and processes are hidden or secret using the securely authenticate and identify the concerned entities. The
encryption technique that appears intangible for outsiders and TTP is based on the following methods: 1) client-server
authentication; 2) low or high-level confidentiality; and
maintains the confidentiality, integrity and privacy of data. 3) cryptography separation of data.
Symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic techniques are
combined (referred as hybrid cryptography) that can provide The ability of PKI is to effectively address the problems of
the efficiency and security of data [58], [59]. security issues in key management. System and network
performance is the important factor in the centralized system.
IV. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION Availability in cloud infrastructure will increase the network
demand and quality of service offers the key issues during
In this section, discusses the suggested security solution of
host-to-host communication, it required additional encryption
the challenges faced in the adoption of cloud computing
process to handle the deficiency. The flexibility of using cloud
environment that influence the customers to release security
infrastructure in the context of demand on CPU controls the
burden with trusting a third party. This study observed that the
systems from overhead and accelerates encryption and
concerns of trust, security and privacy highlighted by many
decryption technique.
cloud providers and customers. The deployment of security
strategies in the cloud environment to achieve integrity, V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
confidentiality and availability of data or systems that adopts to
change the relationship between the cloud provider and the Cloud computing is the emerging technology that brings
customers. A trust-worthy access control infrastructure is many benefits for its customers, organizations and companies.
needed to avoid any unauthorized access to the shared However, despite bringing several advantages, it raises many
resources. Trust required operating in each layer of the cloud security challenges in the adoption of cloud. We explained the
service models (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS) and it needs to ensure the detail design of cloud computing architecture in which
security at the technical, legal, procedural and operational level deployment models, service models, cloud components, and
to allow secure communication. Trust certificate establishes an cloud security are explored. This research attempted to present
entities credentials, identity and responsibilities and serves as many security challenges, threats, attacks and vulnerabilities in
the electronic authentication. The required trust is provided by the systems or data during transfer to the cloud. The
TTP to ensure the identity of communicating parties or entities countermeasure of the security threats will assist the
and examined to adhere the strict policies and requirements. organizations to continue the cost-benefit analysis and to
The end user is needed to utilize electronic certificate for encourage them to transfer into the cloud. In this paper, we
authentication with the cloud service and validating the access discussed the generic design principles of cloud computing
rights to avail the particular resources. The secure SSL environment that stem from the necessary control the relevant
connection is created by the combination of the personal digital threads and vulnerabilities. Cloud computing security requires
certificate with the service provider certificate (IaaS or PaaS), a fundamental point of view from where it is based on
so the cloud infrastructure guarantees or ensures the security of mitigating protection and trust to the TTP. Most of the
encrypting exchange data. identified threats can be address by the combination of SSO,
LDAP and PKI in cloud computing that is dealing with the

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