Cloud security: Analysis and risk management of VM images

Cloud computing may be defined as management and provision of resources, software, applications and information as services over the cloud (internet) on demand. Cloud computing is a flexible, cost-effective, and proven delivery platform for providing business or consumer IT services over the Internet. With its ability to provide users dynamically scalable, shared resources over the Internet and to avoid large upfront fixed costs, cloud computing has recently emerged as a promising hosting platform that performs an intelligent usage of a collection of services, applications, information and infrastructure comprised of pools of computer networks, information and storage resources. However, critical information on the cloud motivates the hackers and presents a serious threat to the critical information, thus creating a need for security. In this paper, we explain how cloud computing along with its open secure architecture emphasize on various security threats in cloud computing, the existing methods to control them, along with their pros and cons. This research paper also focuses on providing the security on VM images which are the foundation for the overall security of the cloud.