A Survey on the Architectures of Data Security in Cloud Storage Infrastructure
Thomas Brindha, Ramaswamy Swarnammal Shaji, G. Rajesh · 2013
Cloud computing is a most alluring technology that facilitates conducive, on-demand network access based on the requirement of users with nominal effort on management and interaction among cloud providers. The cloud storage serves as a dependable platform for long term storage needs which enables the users to move the data to the cloud in a rapid and secure manner. It assists activities and government agencies considerably decrease their economic overhead of data organization, as they can store their data endorsement vaguely to third-party cloud storage sources than preserving the data centers on their personal. Cloud storage allows users to accumulate their data at a remote location and have the on-demand high superiority cloud requests without the burden of restricted hardware and software organization. Along with the widespread benefits on cloud computing, however, security issues with cloud data storage are arising in terms of confidentiality, integrity and reliability. Although the profits are obvious, such a service is also turning down user's corporeal control of their outsourced data, which unavoidably facades novel security dangers towards the accuracy of the data in cloud. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of major security issues that exists in cloud data storage. We also conduct extensive empirical studies and analysis of different techniques which provides security fortification for outsourced data in cloud computing environment. Keyword-Access control, Assured deletion, Backup/recovery, Distributed storage, Error localization. I. INTRODUCTION Cloud Computing is a web based application which provides computation, software, infrastructure, platform, devices and other resources to users on a pay-as-you-use basis. The cloud services can be utilized by the consumers without installation and their personal files can be access from any computer with internet access. The consumers are facilitated to use the services without installation and their individual files can be accessed from any computer with internet access. This technology provides more effective computing by organizing bandwidth and data storage and processing. Among various kinds of cloud computing services, the dramatic growth of cloud storage services enables enterprises to outsource their data into cloud environment for rapid resource elasticity, location independent resource pooling and usage-based pricing. The data outsourced into the cloud offers more profits to consumers since they don't have to care about the adversities of direct hardware management. Even though, these cloud storage services facilitates large amount of space for storage and computing resources, it discards the responsibility for maintenance of data at the same time. Hence for maintaining customer's data and information, the cloud storage systems are anticipated to meet various necessities such as scalability, high reliability, performance, replication, consistency, and data availability (12). The security of data for such a storage service in cloud encompasses various aspects which includes secured channels, authority for access, and encryption. The cloud storage models stores the data on diverse virtualized servers. The flow of data between the users and cloud servers and its storage in the cloud is shown in Fig. 1. The loss of control over security of data is problematic since any confidential and sensitive information provided by the consumer to the vendor will often be stored on, and accessible from, the vendor's systems. It's also necessary to assess the security features of a cloud storage service before making up a contract with the service provider. Big emphasis is placed by most organizations on securing the physical assets such as servers and storage, as well as securing their data assets from unauthorized access. Data security breaches if any, may lead to compliance and regulatory penalties. Hence it is therefore intensely necessary for the consumers to understand how data is being secured within the facilities provided by the cloud service provider.