Chapter 15 – According to Crocker and Smallwood, cloud computing represents one of the

most significant paradigms shifts in information technology (IT) history, due to an

extension of sharing an application-hosting provider that has been around for many years,
and was common in highly regulated vertical industries like banks and health care
institutions. The author’s knowledge from their research continue to assert that, the
impetus behind cloud computing lies on the idea that it provides economies of scale by
spreading costs across many client organizations and pooling computing resources while
matching client computing needs to consumption in a flexible, real-time version.

Q2: Even with this great news about the benefits of the cloud computing applications, the
authors have warned the business user community regarding the dangers associated with
cloud computing applications. Please identify and name these grave dangers/risks that
pose as concerns, and briefly support your discussion.

Cloud computing involves the integration of millions of data from different sources and storing
them in a system aided by the application programming interface (API). However, according to
Crocker and Smallwood, cloud computing poses several threats in the following ways.
Information loss.
This involves the complete loss of data by unlinking it from the original indices or by losing the
encoding key. Storage of data in an unreliable media or deleting the identifying metadata are
risks involved in cloud computing and therefore lead to complete loss of data.
Hacking and security breaches.
The availability of sensitive data in the cloud systems poses a great risk of attack by hackers who
break the codes to illegally access information (Adrian J., 2012). Poor monitoring of the cloud
security systems also provokes malicious attempts to breach the security patterns and get illegal
access to stored data (R. Dubey, 2012).
Insecure Points of Cloud Connection
Crocker and Smallwood describe the movement of information from a point of origin to the
reception server as a connection which must be protected in all intersection joints to avoid
leakage of data. From the article, it is evident that the process of data transfer is complicated and
at times if the connection interface is not properly tested, valuable information could land in bad
hands and be used for destruction purposes.
References
Adrian J. Duncan, Sadie Creese, and Michael Goldsmith. Insider attacks in cloud computing. In
Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), 2012 IEEE 11th
International Conference on, pages 857–862, 2012. 50
R. Dubey, M.A. Jamshed, X. Wang, and R.K. Batalla. Addressing security issues in cloud
computing, 2012. 59, 71
Comment 1
I completely agree with you. The attentiveness of computing resources and consumers in a cloud
computing environment also shows an attention to security threats. Since of their extent and
implication, cloud environments were often targeted through virtual machines & bot malware,
brute force attacks, and other attacks. Asking our cloud provider about access controls,
vulnerability calculation practices, and patch and configuration administration controls to see
that they were adequately protective our data.
Comment 2
A chief risk into the business continuity in the cloud computing environment is damage of
internet connectivity. We should ask our cloud provider what controls are in place to ensure
internet connectivity. If a vulnerability is recognized, we might have to dismiss all access to the
cloud provider until the vulnerability is corrected. Lastly, the seizure of a data-hosting server
through law enforcement agencies might result in the interruption of distinct services stored over
the same machine.