A Classification and Characterization of Security Threats in Cloud Computing

Security and privacy are the most critical issues that need to be addressed in designing a computing environment that is reliable and trustworthy. Like all other computing paradigms, Cloud Computing is no different. Since data and storage are outsourced to third party service providers, users lose direct control of data management and have to depend solely on the providers who may not always be dependable. This distinctive feature of Cloud Computing makes it susceptible to several security threats and vulnerabilities. Although some of the security issues such as network and virtualization security, authentication, access control, confidentiality, and integrity are not new to computing, the effect of such issues is exacerbated in cloud environment because of the unique features (e.g., multi-tenancy, data and resource sharing, virtualization, etc.) it possesses. In this paper, we classify and characterize the various security and privacy challenges associated with Cloud Computing.