Assessing network path vulnerabilities for secure cloud computing

In recent times, cloud computing based delivery model has been proven to reduce enterprise IT costs and complexities. In contrast to traditional enterprise IT solution, the cloud computing model moves the application software and data to remote servers in large datacenters, which raise many security challenges. One of the critical challenges is the inability to characterize the cloud network's impact on the cloud security and performance guarantees. In this paper, we analyze the degree of security provided by the network to data sharing applications deployed in cloud environments that span administrative and network domains. Our analysis is based on examining the security level of network applications on routers which lie between cloud subscriber and cloud provider. Our preliminary results confirm that the majority of the routers are plagued by insecure network protocols, leading to vulnerable routers. These results confirm our hypothesis that the security of the network infrastructure needs to be upgraded to assure the protection of information exchange between the cloud subscriber and cloud provider.