Empirical assessment for security risk and availability in public Cloud frameworks

The rapid spread of using Cloud services has become a source of attraction for many business owners due to its multiple potential benefits of flexibility and efficiency with variant pricing plans that can be suited for all types of users. However, there are some vulnerabilities that have important and influential impact on the Cloud Computing efficiency, specially its ability to achieve availability and security for its customers. In this paper we try to find a way for assessing some of public Cloud frameworks for the E-learning application from two points of view; the availability degree of the Cloud framework in both service's speed and cost, and the vulnerabilities and threats that may infect these frameworks. The paper also presents a developed risk assessment equation in attempting to measure the risk factor for each Cloud platform by measuring the impact of the probable threats on the existing vulnerabilities in every platform. The risk rate measurement may help the user in selecting the most proper framework to deploy his application.