Cloud implementation security challenges

Cloud computing offers significant features such as resource pooling, scalability, on-demand self service, availability, and reliability to organizations to improve their quality of services. For example by using cloud computing services in healthcare it is possible to reach large population of people in isolated geographical areas which will assist in saving their lives in critical situations. It enables the use of latest technologies through its various service delivery and deployment models via the internet on pay-per-use billing pattern. However, cloud computing has dark side when it comes to security and privacy considerations. Critical industries such as healthcare and banking are reluctant to trust cloud computing due to the fear of losing their sensitive data, as it resides on the cloud with no knowledge of data location and lack of transparency of Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) mechanisms used to secure their data and applications which have created a barrier against adopting this agile computing paradigm. This paper addresses cloud computing security concerns that must be considered in order to adopt cloud services in information critical industries.