Data Privacy Concerns Involving Cloud

Cloud Computing is in widespread use today because of its many benefits. One of the early concerns was security and it has been shown in multiple studies that cloud security is significantly enhanced by the use of cloud service. Organizations are able to enhance security because of the advanced features that a cloud service provider is able to provide. The availability of high-end resources for all users of cloud services requires making adjustments to business processes. The main thrust of this paper is to show that when business processes involve the use of cloud then there is the potential for the loss of privacy. We will address this aspect extensively in this paper and suggest some solutions to preserve privacy of individuals and organizations. One aspect of this involves the use of Big Data in the cloud. We will point out that the benefits of using the cloud for large volume storage and handling multiple sources of data. Big Data involves not only having access to a vast collection of data from multiple sources but also the ability to combine them to draw conclusions. When data collected by a particular source alone is available, it may not violate the privacy of individuals. We have to view this in light of the ability to re-identify individuals based on the volume of data available from multiple sources.