Cloud computing security issues and challenges

Cloud computing security issues and challenges
Krešimir Popović, Željko Hocenski
Institute of Automation and Process Computing
Faculty of Electrical Engineering Osijek
Kneza Trpimira 2b, Osijek, 31000, Croatia
Phone: (+385) (0)31-234 810 Fax: (+385) (0)31 224 605 E-mail:popovic@etfos.hr
Abstract - In the last few years, cloud computing has grown
from being a promising business concept to one of the fastest
growing segments of the IT industry. Now, recession-hit
companies are increasingly realizing that simply by tapping
into the cloud they can gain fast access to best-of-breed
business applications or drastically boost their
infrastructure resources, all at negligible cost. But as more
and more information on individuals and companies is
placed in the cloud, concerns are beginning to grow about
just how safe an environment it is. This paper discusses
security issues, requirements and challenges that cloud
service providers (CSP) face during cloud engineering.
Recommended security standards and management models
to address these are suggested for technical and business
community.
I. INTRODUCTION
Cloud service providers (CSP) (e.g. Microsoft, Google,
Amazon, Salesforce.com, GoGrid) are leveraging
virtualization technologies combined with self-service
capabilities for computing resources via the Internet. In
these service provider environments, virtual machines from
multiple organizations have to be co-located on the same
physical server in order to maximize the efficiencies of
virtualization. Cloud service providers must learn from the
managed service provider (MSP) model and ensure that
their customers’ applications and data are secure if they
hope to retain their customer base and competitiveness.
Today, enterprises are looking toward cloud computing
horizons to expand their on-premises infrastructure, but
most cannot afford the risk of compromising the security of
their applications and data.
International Data Corporation (IDC) conducted a
survey [1] (see Fig.1.) of 263 IT executives and their line-of-
business colleagues to gauge their opinions and
understand their companies’ use of IT cloud services.
Security ranked first as the greatest challenge or issue of
cloud computing.
Corporations and individuals are concerned about how
security and compliance integrity can be maintained in this
new environment. Even more concerning, though, is the
corporations that are jumping to cloud computing while
being oblivious to the implications of putting critical
applications and data in the cloud. Moving critical
applications and sensitive data to a public and shared
cloud environment is a major concern for corporations that
are moving beyond their data center’s network perimeter
defense. To alleviate these concerns, a cloud solution
provider must ensure that customers can continue to have
the same security and privacy controls over their
applications and services, provide evidence to these
customers that their organization and customers are secure
and they can meet their service-level agreements, and show
how can they prove compliance to their auditors.
Fig. 1. Results of IDC ranking security challenges (3Q2009,
n=263)
Regardless of how the cloud evolves, it needs some form
of standardization (e.g. Information Technology
Infrastructure Library -ITIL, ISO/IEC 27001/27002, Open
Virtualization Format (OVF) [2][3][4]) so that the market can
evolve and thrive. Standards should allow clouds to
interoperate and communicate with each other no matter
which vendor provides cloud services.
This professional paper discusses security and privacy
issues as challenges, and recommends control objectives
to technical and business community. It also highly
recommends OVF standard as vendor and platform
independent, open, secure, portable, efficient and
extensible format for the packaging and distribution of
software to be run in virtual machines (software stack that
incorporates the target applications, libraries, services,
configuration, relevant data, and operating system).
II. SECURITY IN THE CLOUD
A. Security issues and challenges
Heightened security threats must be overcome in order
to benefit fully from this new computing paradigm. Some
security concerns are listed and discussed below:

1) Security concern #1: With the cloud model control
physical security is lost because of sharing computing
resources with other companies. No knowledge or control
of where the resources run.
2) Security concern #2: Company has violated the law
(risk of data seizure by (foreign) government).
3) Security concern #3: Storage services provided by one
cloud vendor may be incompatible with another vendor’s
services if user decides to move fromone to the other (e.g.
Microsoft cloud is incompatible with Google cloud). [5]
4) Security concern #4: Who controls the
encryption/decryption keys? Logically it should be the
customer.
5) Security concern #5: Ensuring the integrity of the data
(transfer, storage, and retrieval) really means that it
changes only in response to authorized transactions. A
common standard to ensure data integrity does not yet
exist.
6) Security concern #6: In case of Payment Card Industry
Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) data logs must be
provided to security managers and regulators. [6][7][8]
7) Security concern #7: Users must keep up to date with
application improvements to be sure they are protected.
8) Security concern #8: Some government regulations
have strict limits on what data about its citizens can be
stored and for how long, and some banking regulators
require that customer’s financial data remain in their home
country.
9) Security concern #9: The dynamic and fluid nature of
virtual machines will make it difficult to maintain the
consistency of security and ensure the auditability of
records.
10) Security concern #10: Customers may be able to sue
cloud service providers if their privacy rights are violated,
and in any case the cloud service providers may face
damage to their reputation. Concerns arise when it is not
clear to individuals why their personal information is
requested or how it will be used or passed on to other
parties.
Privacy sensitive information: [9]
- Personally identifiable information (PII [10]): any
information that could be used to identify or
locate an individual (e.g. state, name, address) or
information that can be correlated with other
information to indentify an individual (e.g. credit
card number, Internet protocol (IP) address).
- Information on religion, race, health, union
membership, sexual orientation, job performance,
financial information, biometric information or any
other information that may be considered
sensitive.
- Data collected from computer devices (e.g.
notebook, smartphone, iPad).
- Information uniquely traceable to a user device
(e.g. IP address, Radio Frequency Identity (RFID)
MAC address).
Additional considerations to be aware of:
- Access: Data subjects have a right to know what
personal information is held and, in some cases,
can make a request to stop processing it. If a data
subject exercises this right to ask the organization
to delete his data, will it be possible to ensure that
all of his information has been deleted in the
cloud?
- Compliance: What are the applicable laws,
regulations, standards, and contractual
commitments that govern this information, and
who is responsible for maintaining the
compliance? Clouds can cross multiple
jurisdictions in multiple states.
- Storage: Where is the data in the cloud stored?
Was it transferred to another data center in
another country? Privacy laws in various
countries place limitations on the ability of
organizations to transfer some types of personal
information to other countries.
- Retention: How long is personal information (that
is transferred to the cloud) retained? Who
enforces the retention policy in the cloud, and
how are exceptions to this policy (such as
litigation holds) managed?
- Destruction: How can we know that the cloud
service provider (CSP) didn’t retain additional
copies? Did the CSP really destroy the data, or
just make it inaccessible to the organization? Is
the CSP keeping the information longer than
necessary so that it can mine the data for its own
use?
- Audit and monitoring: How can organizations
monitor their CSP and provide assurance to
relevant stakeholders that privacy requirements
are met when their PII is in the cloud?
- Privacy breaches: How can we ensure that the
cloud service provider (CSP) notifies us when a
breach occurs, and who is responsible for
managing the breach notification process (and
costs associated with the process)? If contracts
include liability for breaches resulting from
negligence of the CSP, how is the contract
enforced and how is it determined who is at fault?
B. Security management standards
Standards that are relevant to security management
practices in the cloud are Information Technology
Infrastructure Library (ITIL), ISO/IEC 27001/27002 and
Open Virtualization Format (OVF).
1) Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL): it
is set of best practices and guidelines that define an
integrated, process-based approach for managing
information technology services. ITIL can be applied
across almost every type of IT environment including
cloud operating environment. ITIL seeks to ensure that
effective information security measures are taken at
strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Information
security is considered an iterative process that must be
controlled, planned, implemented, evaluated, and
maintained.

ITIL provides a systematic and professional approach to
the management of IT service provision. Adopting its
guidance offers users a huge range of benefits that include:
- Reduced costs
- Improved IT services through the use of proven
best practice processes
- Improved customer satisfaction through a more
professional approach to service delivery
- Standards and guidance
- Improved productivity
- Improved use of skills and experience
- Improved delivery of third party services through
the specification of ITIL or ISO 20000 as the
standard for service delivery in services
procurements
- ITIL helps you separate administrative tasks and
technical tasks so that you assign the most
appropriate resources
- better measure technical support performance
The ITIL-process Security Management describes the
structured fitting of information security in the management
organization. It is based on the code of practice for
information security management now known as ISO/IEC
27002.
ITIL breaks information security down into:
- Policies: The overall objectives an organization is
attempting to achieve
- Processes: What has to happen to achieve the
objectives
- Procedures: Who does what and when to achieve
the objectives:
- Work instructions: Instructions for taking specific
actions
A basic goal of security management is to ensure
adequate information security. The primary goal of
information security, in turn, is to protect information
assets against risks, and thus to maintain their value to the
organization. This is commonly expressed in terms of
ensuring their confidentiality, integrity and availability,
along with related properties or goals such as authenticity,
accountability, non-repudiation and reliability.
Note: Organizations and management systems cannot be
certified as “ITIL-compliant.” Only practioners can be
certified.
2) International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
27001/27002: ISO/IEC 27001 formally defines the
mandatory requirements for an Information Security
Management System (ISMS). It is also a certification
standard and uses ISO/IEC 27002 to indicate suitable
information security controls within the ISMS.
Essentially, the ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, and ISO/IEC
27001/27002 frameworks help IT organizations internalize
and respond to basic questions such as:
- “How do I ensure that the current security levels
are appropriate for your needs? “
- “How do I apply a security baseline throughout
your operation? “
Simply to say, they help to respond to the question:
“how do I ensure that my services are secure?”
3) Open Virtualization Format: OVF enables efficient,
flexible, and secure distribution of enterprise software,
facilitating the mobility of virtual machines and giving
customers vendor and platform independence. Customers
can deploy an OVF formatted virtual machine on the
virtualization platformof their choice.
With OVF, customers’ experience with virtualization is
greatly enhanced, with more portability, platform
independence, verification, signing, versioning, and
licensing terms. OVF lets you:
- Improve your user experience with streamlined
installations
- Offer customers virtualization platform
independence and flexibility
- Create complex pre-configured multi-tiered
services more easily
- Efficiently deliver enterprise software through
portable virtual machines
- Offer platform-specific enhancements and easier
adoption of advances in virtualization through
extensibility
The rising investments to virtual appliances (IBM,
Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, VMware, and XenSource)
not only simplify the deployment of applications for
individual users but also power next-generation cloud
computing architectures. Rather than the considerable time
required to build a specialized distribution with
applications, most cloud computing infrastructures provide
ready-to-deploy virtual appliances to satisfy any need.
And because a virtual appliance is simply a file with a
wrapper (the XML description), it's easy to replicate and
distribute such appliances with all security and privacy
configurations.
In the future, clouds that are enabled by a
virtualization layer will provide new go-to-market
opportunities, and software appliances (software products
that integrate operating system and layered software into
an easily managed composite package that can be
deployed aboard industry-standard client or server
hardware, either on a virtual machine or directly on the
hardware) will help simplify this transition. Cloud
computing, in conjunction with software appliances, will
also create new business models that will allow companies
to sell a single product on premises, on demand, or in a
hybrid deployment model. While both of these
technologies remain relatively immature, it is necessary to
start understanding the new dynamics that will start to
emerge to sell software and hardware to end users.
Note: Software appliances market should exceed
revenue of $360.9 million by the end of 2010, $1,184.4 billion
by the end of 2012. [11]

C. Security management models
This section describes twenty recommended security
management models and their requirements for cloud
computing that cloud service providers should definitely
consider as they develop or refine their compliance
programs.
1) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) security: SaaS is the
dominant cloud service model for the foreseeable future
and the area where the most critical need for security
practices and oversight will reside. Just as with a managed
service provider, corporations or end users will need to
research vendors’ policies on data security before using
vendor services to avoid losing or not being able to access
their data. The technology analyst and consulting firm
Gartner lists [12] seven security risks which one should
discuss with a cloud-computing vendor:
- Privileged user access: Get as much information
as you can about the people who manage your
data. Ask providers to supply specific information
on the hiring and oversight of privileged
administrators, and the controls over their access.
- Regulatory compliance: Make sure that the
vendor is willing to undergo external audits and/or
security certifications.
- Data location: When you use the cloud, you
probably won't know exactly where your data is
hosted. In fact, you might not even know what
country it will be stored in. Ask providers if they
will commit to storing and processing data in
specific jurisdictions, and whether they will make a
contractual commitment to obey local privacy
requirements on behalf of their customers.
- Data segregation: Make sure that encryption is
available at all stages, and that these encryption
schemes were designed and tested by experienced
professionals.
- Recovery: Even if you don't know where your data
is, a cloud provider should tell you what will
happen to your data and service in case of a
disaster. Any offering that does not replicate the
data and application infrastructure across multiple
sites is vulnerable to a total failure. Ask your
provider if it has "the ability to do a complete
restoration, and how long it will take."
- Investigative support: Investigating inappropriate
or illegal activity may be impossible in cloud
computing. Cloud services are especially difficult
to investigate, because logging and data for
multiple customers may be co-located and may
also be spread across an ever-changing set of
hosts and data centers. If you cannot get a
contractual commitment to support specific forms
of investigation, along with evidence that the
vendor has already successfully supported such
activities, then only safe assumption is that
investigation and discovery requests will be
impossible.
- Long-term viability: Ideally, your cloud
computing provider will never go broke or get
acquired and swallowed up by a larger company.
But you must be sure your data will remain
available even after such an event. Ask potential
providers how you would get your data back and
if it would be in a format that you could import
into a replacement application.
To address the security issues listed above, SaaS
providers will need to incorporate and enhance security
practices used by the managed service providers and
develop new ones as the cloud computing environment
evolves.
2) Security management (People): One of the most
important actions for a security team is to develop a formal
charter for the security organization and program. The
charter should be aligned with the strategic plan of the
organization or company the security team works for. Lack
of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and agreement
on expectations, can result in a general feeling of loss and
confusion among the security team about what is expected
of them, how their skills and experienced can be leveraged,
and meeting their performance goals.
3) Security governance: A security steering committee
should be developed whose objective is to focus on
providing guidance about security initiatives and alignment
with business and IT strategies. This committee must
clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the security
team and other groups involved in performing information
security functions.
4) Risk management: Risk management entails
identification of technology assets [13]; identification of
data and its links to business processes, applications, and
data stores; and assignment of ownership and custodial
responsibilities. Actions should also include maintaining a
repository of information assets. Owners have authority
and accountability for information assets including
protection requirements, and custodians implement
confidentiality, integrity, availability, and privacy controls.
5) Risk assessment: Security risk assessment is critical to
helping the information security organization make
informed decisions when balancing the dueling priorities of
business utility and protection of assets [14][15]. A formal
information security risk management process should
proactively assess information security risks as well as plan
and manage them on a periodic or as-needed basis. More
detailed and technical security risk assessments in the form
of threat modeling should also be applied to applications
and infrastructure.
6) Security awareness: People are the weakest link for
security. Knowledge and culture are among the few
effective tools to manage risks related to people. Not
providing proper awareness and training to the people who
may need them can expose the company to a variety of
security risks for which people, rather than system or
application vulnerabilities, are the threats and points of
entry. Social engineering attacks, lower reporting of and
slower responses to potential security incidents, and
inadvertent customer data leaks are all possible and
probable risks that may be triggered by lack of an effective
security awareness program.
7) Education and training: Programs should be developed
that provide a baseline for providing fundamental security
and risk management skills and knowledge to the security

team and their internal partners. This entails a formal
process to assess and align skill sets to the needs of the
security team and to provide adequate training and
mentorship-providing a broad base of fundamental
security, inclusive of data privacy, and risk management
knowledge.
8) Policies and standards: Many resources and templates
are available to aid in the development of information
security policies and standards. A cloud computing
security team should first identify the information security
and business requirements unique to cloud computing,
SaaS, and collaborative software application security.
Policies should be developed, documented, and
implemented, along with documentation for supporting
standards and guidelines. To maintain relevancy, these
policies, standards, and guidelines should be reviewed at
regular intervals or when significant changes occur in the
business or IT environment.
9) Third party risk management: Lack of a third-party risk
management program may result in damage to the
provider’s reputation, revenue losses, and legal actions
should the provider be found not to have performed due
diligence on its third-party vendors.
10) Vulnerability assessment: Classifies network assets to
more efficiently prioritize vulnerability-mitigation programs,
such as patching and systemupgrading.
11) Security image testing: Virtualization-based cloud
computing provides the ability to create “Test image” VM
secure builds and to clone multiple copies. Gold image VMs
also provide the ability to keep security up to date and
reduce exposure by patching offline. Offline VMs can be
patched off-network, providing an easier, more cost-
effective, and less production-threatening way to test the
impact of security changes.
12) Data governance: This framework should describe
who can take what actions with what information, and
when, under what circumstances, and using what methods.
13) Data security: Security will need to move to the data
level so that enterprises can be sure their data is protected
wherever it goes. For example, with data-level security, the
enterprise can specify that this data is not allowed to go
outside of the European Union. It can also force encryption
of certain types of data, and permit only specified users to
access the data. It can provide compliance with the
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
14) Application security: This is where the security
features and requirements are defined and application
security test results are reviewed. Application security
processes, secure coding guidelines, training, and testing
scripts and tools are typically a collaborative effort
between the security and the development teams.
Although product engineering will likely focus on the
application layer, the security design of the application
itself, and the infrastructure layers interacting with the
application, the security team should provide the security
requirements for the product development engineers to
implement.
15) Virtual machine security: In the cloud environment,
physical servers are consolidated to multiple virtual
machine instances on virtualized servers. Not only can data
center security teams replicate typical security controls for
the data center at large to secure the virtual machines, they
can also advise their customers on how to prepare these
machines for migration to a cloud environment when
appropriate.
16) Identity Access Management (IAM): identity and
access management is a critical function for every
organization, and a fundamental expectation of SaaS
customers is that the “principle of least privilege” is
granted to their data. The principle of least privilege states
that only the minimum access necessary to perform an
operation should be granted, and that access should be
granted only for the minimumamount of time necessary.
17) Change management: The security team can create
security guidelines for standards and minor changes, to
provide self-service capabilities for these changes and to
prioritize the security team’s time and resources on more
complexand important changes to production.
18) Physical security: Since customers lose control over
physical assets, security model may need to be
reevaluated. The concept of the cloud can be misleading at
times, and people forget that everything is somewhere
actually tied to a physical location. The massive investment
required to build the level of security required for physical
data centers is the prime reason that companies don’t build
their own data centers, and one of several reasons why
they are moving to cloud services in the first place. Some
samples of controls mechanisms:
- 24/7/365 onsite security.
- Biometric hand geometry readers.
- Security cameras should monitor activity
throughout the facility.
- Heat, temperature, air flow, and humidity should
all be kept within optimumranges for the computer
equipment.
- Policies, processes, and procedures are critical
elements of successful physical security that can
protect the equipment and data housed in the
hosting center.
19) Disaster recovery: In the SaaS environment, customers
rely heavily on 24/7/365 access to their services and any
interruption in access can be catastrophic. Using the
virtualization software virtual server can be copied, backed
up, and moved just like a file (live migration). Benefits are:
- Quickly reallocating computing resources without
any downtime
- Ability to deliver on service-level agreements and
provide high-quality service
20) Data privacy: A privacy steering committee should
also be created to help make decisions related to data
privacy. The security compliance team, if one even exists,
will not have formalized training on data privacy. The
answer is to hire a consultant in this area, hire a privacy
expert, or have one of your existing team members trained
properly. This will ensure that your organization is
prepared to meet the data privacy demands of its customers
and regulators.

III. CONCLUSION
We have argued that it is very important to take security
and privacy into account when designing and using cloud
services. In this paper security in cloud computing was
elaborated in a way that covers security issues and
challenges, security standards and security management
models.
- Security issues indicate potential problems which
might arise.
- Security standards offer some kind of security
templates which cloud service providers (CSP)
could obey. The most promising standard for the
future would be OVF format which promises
creation of new business models that will allow
companies to sell a single product on premises, on
demand, or in a hybrid deployment model.
- Security management models offer
recommendations based on security standards
and best practices. [16]
These are all very important topics which will be
certainly discussed in the upcoming years of cloud
computing. Based on IDC survey [17] the security and
vulnerability market should exceed revenue of $4.4 billion
by the end of 2013, with a climbing annual growth rate
resulting in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
10.8%. This survey shows that products that fall within the
security and vulnerability management market will remain in
high demand.
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[4] Distributed Management Task Force,
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017_1.0.0.pdf, 22.02.2009
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df

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