List and describe the security challenges, which are threatening the cloud computing environment.

 CLOUD SECURITY CHALLENGES AND RISKS 

Although virtualization and cloud computing can help businesses achieve more by breaking down the physical barriers that exist between an IT infrastructure and its customers, increased security dangers must be faced to fully benefit from this new computing paradigm. This is especially true for SaaS providers. Some security issues merit further consideration. For example, in the cloud, you lose some control over assets, thus your security approach must be re-evaluated.

Enterprise security is only as good as its most untrustworthy partner, department, or vendor. Can you put your data in the hands of your service provider? Physical security is lost while using the cloud approach You share computer resources with other businesses in a public cloud. You have no information or control over where the resources run in a common pool outside the organization. Exposing your data in a shared environment with other businesses may provide the authorities with "reasonable cause" to confiscate your assets because another firm broke the law. Simply because you share the cloud environment puts your data in danger of confiscation.

As more mission-critical activities are shifted to the cloud, SaaS providers will be required to offer to log data in a real-time, simple manner, most likely for their administrators as well as their customers. Someone must be in charge of monitoring for security and compliance, and they will be unable to do so until the application and data are in the control of end-users. Will consumers have enough faith in the cloud provider to move mission-critical apps to the cloud? Monitoring is difficult since the SaaS provider's logs are internal and not always accessible externally or by clients or investigators.

Closed apps are constantly updated with new features, and users must stay up to current on program updates to ensure their security. The rate at which apps evolve on the cloud will have an impact on both the SDLC and security. For example-  Microsoft SDLC believe that mission crtical software would not change significantly for one to five year, but the cloud may necessitate a change in the program every few weeks. Worse, a secure SDLC will not be able to provide a security cycle that keeps up with the rapid changes. This implies that users must regularly upgrade since an older version may not perform properly or adequately safeguard data.

While surrendering significant control over data is not a smart idea from a security standpoint, business simplicity and financial saving will continue to encourage the use of these services. Security managers will need to collaborate with their company's legal team to ensure that suitable contract conditions are in place to secure corporate data while also providing acceptable service-level agreements. Because of cloud-based services, any mobile IT users will be able to access company data and services without having to connect to the corporate network. This will heighten the requirement for businesses to implement security controls have been mobile users and cloud-based services. Placing enormous volumes of sensitive data in a globally accessible cloud expose firms to enormous and dispersed threats- attackers no longer need to come on-site to steal data, and they can find it all in a single " virtual" place.

The dynamic and fluid nature of virtual machines will make it difficult to maintain security consistency and assure record audibility. The ease with which physical servers may be cloned and distributed may result in the spread of configuration problems and other vulnerabilities. IT will be difficult to demonstrate a system's security condition and locate an unsecured virtual machine. Regardless of where the virtual machine is located inside the virtual environment, intrusion detection and prevention systems must be able to identify malicious behavior at the virtual environment machine level. the co-location of numerous machines expands the attack surfaces and raises the danger of virtual machine-to -virtual -machine compromises.

Ina cloud server environment, localized virtual machines, and physical servers share the same operating systems as well as corporate and online applications, rising the risk of an attack or malware remotely exploiting weaknesses in these systems and applications. Virtual machines are susceptible when they transition between the private and public clouds. A complete or partially shared cloud environment is predicted to have a larger attack surface and hence to be more vulnerable than a dedicated resources environment.

Many organizations are likely rushing into cloud computing without giving any attention to the security application to reap the benefits of cloud computing, not the least of which is significant cost reduction. To create trust zones in the cloud, virtual machines must be self-defending, thereby shifting the boundary to the virtual machines themselves. Enterprises' perimeter security(firewalls, demilitarized ones, network segmentation, intrusion detection, and prevention systems, monitoring tools, and related securing policies) solely controls data that resides and travels behind the perimeter. The cloud computing provider is responsible for client data security and privacy in the cloud computing industry.