An investigative analysis into security in the clouds and the impact of virtualization on the security architecture

The new trend to increasing efficiency in Information Systems (IS) investments is to migrate data processing and storage to external service-centers and vendors that provide a commodity computing platforms that are called Cloud Computing. The approach advocates minimizing the local capabilities to utilize thin clients while providing data manipulation and/or storage services by the service provider over time-shared resources. The concept is not new, however the implementation approach presents a strategic shift in the way organizations provision and manage their IT resources. The systems that process and fuse such data would have to be capable of classifying the resulting information and clearing the computing resources prior to allowing new application to be executed. Processing various levels of sensitive information and fusing results might require the development of a multi-level security system that can send the output to a protected network and systems in order not to have data spill or contaminated resources. The paper discusses these security requirements and potential impact on the cloud architecture. Additionally, the paper discusses the unexpected advantages of the cloud framework providing a sophisticated environment for information sharing and data mining. Finally, the paper introduces emerging issues that need to be addressed including providence, data tagging, and governance.