Cloud Comuting Interoute Communications

Question: Describe about the Cloud Comuting for Interoute Communications. Answer: Applications In The Cloud Majority of modern organizations are transitioning from their local environments to the cloud. This is especially due to the real or perceived management load of information technology duties and the lack of capital and expertise to address or handle information systems and applications. An organization will require to put into consideration their capacity to handle the demands that come with shifting to a cloud enviroment and especially the security of the the applications they are using. Impotantly, the organization should sheck to ensure that encryption and key handling is done whenever they use an application being which have a likelihood of being shared [1]. Applications in the cloud are normally accessed remotely and are run on operating system, hardware and interconnection infrastructure which the user of the application has little or no control over. These applications are accessible to other businesses or individuals who use them for similar purposes. This leads to a shared web server which at times may not be secured. This is because, if a users site accessing a cloud application gets compromised, there is a high likelihood of others getting compromised too because the similarity of applications and thus put the shared server into jeopardy and even in extreme cases, denial of service attacks may occur [2]. Private Cloud This is a cloud enviroment belonging only to a particular client or organization. The resources in this kind of cloud are only accessible to a single client or organization. The greatest benefit with the private cloud is it provides a controlled access to the organizations resources and also a better privacy [3]. The main consideration under the private cloud is to be aware of the value of service being provided or accessed from that cloud. There are usually two types and they are categorized into services of low value and those of high value. The services of low value normally are less risky but once accessed by an attacker, they might exploit the weakeness to attack a service of high value. A solution to this would be to segregate the services, for example, those that are of high value to run on their own specific cloud infrastructure which has its own rigid security measures [4]. Public Cloud This is whereby the resources in the cloud are accessible to the public through the internet. Data security is the main concern since the individuals, businesses or even governments have to rely on the service providers to have their data secured. Security risks originate from the fact that the data from these users or clients will likely be stored in the same database which contributes to a high risk of data leakage among the clients. The danger that comes with data being leaked can be avoided through adoption of security policies such as having data for different users or clients being kept in separate from that of other clients[5]. Cloud Development Due to the need to address various security issues, it has become important to adopt best practices for secure development of cloud applications. Emergence and growth of cloud computing has contributed to some set of security issues such as data breaches, data leakage and data loss, denial of service attacks as well as insecure application programming interfaces(APIs). To avoid these issues, the first consideration would be to recognize that aplications are developed sequentially or follow a predifined methodology. This enables the developers to implement security at each layer or step of development lifecycle [6]. Cost Management One of the emerging challenges in cloud computing is the management of costs associated with storage of data used in the cloud computing environment. When a company works with more applications and large sets of data, costs too will be high. To help in reduction of costs, clients or users should use tools such as cloud analytics which are provided at a fee by various vendors. These tools help the clients to perform actions such as visualization of cloud cost for an application in order to determine how much they may have to pay in a certain time frame with respect to their growth curve or direction. Some of these tools are able to forecast future cloud costs thus helping the clients to identify opportunities where they can save on these costs [7]. Cloud Security Due to the emergence of cloud computing, there have a been a great shift in how computing resources such as hardware and software are consumed by individuals and businesses. Despite this, there have been a lot of misgivings on how security is handled in the cloud due to the crucial data and information that is handled in the cloud. The best solution to this issue would be a customer finding out how a cloud services provider handles security. Some of the points to consider include how data is secured while in transit. Customer should check to find whether data between the server and their device is protected and exchanged over a HTTPS encryption. Also a customer should demand for information from the service provider concerning security and be able to even know the business continuity plan in place just in case there is a security breach [8]. Conclusion This report discusses cloud computing security and services. Cloud computing is among the current trends in technologically advanced economies. Applications are hosted on a remote environment. This has resulted to emergence of cloud packages such as private cloud and public cloud. With this comes the need to develop cloud based aplications that are secure to cater for users needs. Adoption of cloud computing also has its own set of costs which need to be looked into. Regardless of issues that come with moving to the cloud enviroment, benefits of adopting cloud computing far outweigh the costs especially considering production and consumption of big data which can only be efficiently done in a cloud environment. References "What is a Private Cloud?," Interoute Communications Limited, [Online]. Available: https://www.interoute.com/cloud-article/what-private-cloud. [Accessed 5 October 2016]. I. Hosting, "Inmotion Hosting," [Online]. Available: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/website-design/using-css/linking-your-css-to-your-website. [Accessed October 2016]. T. Shinder, "Building Clouds," Microsoft Corporation, 9 November 2014. [Online]. Available: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/privatecloud/2014/11/09/private-cloud-security-considerations-guide-security-challenges/. [Accessed 5 October 2016]. T. J. Swarnpreet S, "Cost breakdown of Public Cloud Computing and Private Cloud Computing and Security Issues," International Journal of Computer Science Information Technology (IJCSIT) , vol. IV, 2012. Keiko Hashizume et al, "An analysis of security issues for cloud computing," Journal of Internet Services and Applications, p. 4, 2013. Bryan Sullivan et al, "Practices for Secure Development of Cloud Applications," Seattle, 2013. "Cloud Cost Analysis," RIGHTSCALE, 4 August 2014. [Online]. Available: https://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/now-available-cloud-analytics-cloud-cost-management. [Accessed 6 October 2016].