In recent days, the usage and sale of digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc., have increased exponentially. These devices connect to other mobile devices allowing users to share and access data and applications on the go, anywhere, and at any time. The traditional infrastructure is a thing of the past now. Managing data has become costly and is not as easy as it once was. The rapid growth in internet usage worldwide has led to cloud computing, which offers a means of managing data of any size and variety.

Cloud computing introduces ways of providing new resources through the internet based on hardware ownership and storage location. Now, users of cloud computing do not own its infrastructure, rather the service providers own it. This gives rise to some privacy and security concerns by users.

The Cloud computing domain is very broad. It is almost impossible to address all its components in this article. However, since we are mainly interested in the data staging issues in cloud computing, we will focus on them alone. It is important to mention that as organizations and individuals store more-and-more information on cloud storage, more security breaches and privacy problems are arising. Storing sensitive data on the cloud is not always advisable.

Classifying Data Security Issues

The most common and important concern when it comes to data security is the technology uses for its storage. In an uncontrolled environment such as Cloud Computing, ensuring acquiring the right technology for data security has become very challenging. One needs to distinguish and identify the security risks associated with IT infrastructure and the risks caused by using cloud computing.

Generally, the risks associated are open, shared, and distributed environments.

To analyze the associated risks, we must separate the existing problems and those raised due to cloud computing.

When one outsources data to cloud infrastructure, it becomes more vulnerable than data stored on a traditional infrastructure (local server). There are three reasons for this:

The data is on the provider’s infrastructure
There are different users’ data also stored on the same physical infrastructure
The data is easy to access via the internet

This classification is based on three aspects of cloud computing:

– Single cloud characteristics
– Cloud data life cycle
– Data security attributes.

Data Issues Based on Cloud Characteristics

There is no doubt that the cloud infrastructure is different from traditional infrastructure. There are some benefits that come with these differences, just as there are inconveniences coming along with it. Below are some of the benefits and inconveniences based on the main characteristics of cloud computing:

Leased Infrastructure

In this case, the cloud infrastructure does not belong to the user. It belongs to the service provider. Users are not purchasing the hardware dedicated to their data storage, but as leasing it from the provider. The advantage of this infrastructure is that users get storage at an affordable cost. The main inconvenience here is that the users lose control of their data when there is a breach in security.

Open Infrastructure

Access to this infrastructure is via the internet. The main advantage of this is ubiquitous access to services. The main inconvenience is that there are multiple entry portals.

Shared infrastructure

This is a shared cloud infrastructure that is unlike the traditional infrastructure.

Elastic Infrastructure

The users of this cloud can scale the resources up or down based on their needs. In other words, this infrastructure varies with the user’s demand. This form of cloud computing scales to the demand. The main advantage of this form of infrastructure is resource optimization. The con is risk associated with resource reallocation.

Virtualized Infrastructure

This is the basic concept supporting cloud computing. It is more of a virtual machine rather than a physical one. The pros of this are optimized infrastructure, and the con is that it is associated with classical problems of virtualization.

Distributed Infrastructure

The distribution of this infrastructure is based on global geography. The pros are increased storage capacity and computing, while the cons are maintenance and management of the infrastructure.

Some other risks to data due to these infrastructures include:

Data-in-transit
Data-in-use
Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability

The Solution to Data Issues and Risks

The best way to elude these issues is by protecting the stored and transmitted data by encrypting it. Data security solutions depend on parameters like data type and data size.