Cloud Reliability: Possible Sources of Security and Legal Issues?

Cloud computing is a key supporting technology driving the fourth industrial revolution, spanning from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud for Telecoms (C4T) to Industry 4.0 to Smart Cities. This pervasiveness of cloud technology is due to its ability to easily share and obtain resources on a pay-peruse and elastic provisioning model. Several enterprises use the cloud as a cheap solution to achieve computational and storage capabilities they need without incurring in the costs associated with owning and maintaining data centers. This implies that cloud-based applications rely on the correctness of the services provided by the cloud platforms and that any possible outage could result in considerable loss of reputation and money to the application provider. This could also effectively bring actions against the cloud service provider for violations to the agreed Service Level Agreement (SLA).