Analysis of Cloud Computing Security Issues and Risks

In the world of computer networking, cloud computing makes a technical shift of computing services being provided locally to being provided remotely by third party service providers. The data which was previously kept under control of users now under the control of service providers cloud computing brings many financial and functional benefits as well as serious security concerns that may threaten business continuity and corporate reputation. The definition of cloud computing is still blurry in a large part, because of the magnitude of the security risks and the virtually unlimited amount of information being published over the unsecure platform. The purpose of this paper is to assess how security risk factors are affecting the existing and prospective cloud users’ cloud usage strategies. Are they simply betting that financial benefits will surpass security risks, or are they confident that cloud providers are capable of assuring an equal or higher level of security than on-premise systems? This survey, through the examination of published materials and studies, analyzes existing issues along with available countermeasures in order to evaluate the overall assurance level of cloud security. The primary goal of the survey is to assess how security concerns have affected or will affect the respondents’ decision on adopting cloud and its services. This study includes basics of cloud computing by adding its characteristics, models and their categories. Analysis also embraced the existing security concerns faced by researchers and their imposed methodologies.