The Limitations Of Cloud Computing

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Keywords: cloud computing, data security, policy issues, global level standard regulation, privacy, reliability

Introduction

Cloud computing is based on TCP/IP protocol providing end users with a relatively new way of computational technique. It is integration of different computer technologies to form a high speed and reliable system for computing. In the rapidly changing technological world, computation has been changed significantly (Wang, 2011). Now it has been more services oriented like other basic utility services such as gas, water and electricity in general term. In cloud computing businesses and users can access different applications and services from anywhere using any electronic device around the world. Software has became a service to be used by large number of people which broaden software scope of services example, SaaS (software as a service model), PaaS(Platform as a service model) and IaaS(Infrastructure as a service model) are commonly used in cloud computing models (Bojanova, 2011). In a report by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing as an on-demand access to share resources such as servers, networks and application etc, can be rendered with minimal effort (Mell Peter, 2011)

Definition of cloud computing

As the definition suggests that cloud computing is about a convenient way of accessing interconnected computing resources to increase the computational speed. Cloud is not just about accessing the share resources but accessing it on-demand is an important aspect. It is difficult to find a standard definition of cloud computing. Different research studies and cloud computing experts have described it in different ways. Association of computing machinery (ACM) refers cloud computing as application based service provided over the internet together with hardware and software in the data centers (Michael Armbrust, 2010).

In another studied it has found that cloud computing is a parallel and distributed system that connect physical and virtualized machine to form a unified resources to provide users with different services (Buyyaa Rajkumar, 2009).

Problem Statement

To study or establish the data security policies in the cloud computing which must contains some regulations at global level like cyber security regulation because, now a day's data has been leaked through the cloud based applications which will become the major threat for the customers and organizations.

Literature Review

Characteristics of cloud computing

Automatic Software Integration

Integration of cloud occurs automatically. Now we don’t need to manually set down all the application which suits our company profile. We can just pick the service and application which are required in our company (Wrinkler, 2011)

Easy Access to Information

After registration of account with any cloud service provider we can access our information from anywhere. This feature allow us to access data outside geographical and time zone factor (Buyya R, 2008)

Quick Deployment

Cloud computing gives a huge advantage to fast setup and easy deployment of applications. In few minutes we can easily setup whole system on the cloud for the organizations. But it’s again depending on your business requirement that how many applications and modules are using and deploying at a time (Dexter duncan, 2011)

Limitations of cloud computing

Apart from benefits of the cloud, it has also some major critical limitations as well as in terms of policies (Tan, 2011), which are as follows

Technical Issues

It is true that now a day's internet based applications need high speed so, that's why cloud based applications need high speed internet connection and therefore any organization can get affected if internet service goes down. Even the best cloud service provider can faced this type of problem but you might also have stuck due to internet connectivity problem (Tsai, 2010)

Security policy in the Cloud

Security is one of the major challenge in cloud computing because all information exist on the cloud like company's private information which includes accounts, customer information and sales reports etc which is highly confidential for any organizations and if there will be any breach in security policy the company might get into the high risk. So, all cloud service providers need to secure the applications for the customers (Yang, 2010)

No global level authority

There is no global level regulation authority which ensure the standard services for all cloud service providers. Although Security is the major concern but in terms of data disaster or data leakage there must be some global level authority organization which is responsible to solve the dispute (J.C, 2010).

In approaching cloud computing from a policy-making stand point, the regulation of government

may serve instructive. While e-government is also an online technology that developed

quickly and needed guiding policies after development was well under way. A series of policies,

regulations, and the E-government Act of 2002, however, gave shape to development and

regulation of e-government (Paul T.Jaeger, 2011)

In a similar fashion, the development of policies, regulations, or even a law to cover cloud computing issues would be extremely helpful in sorting out the concerns and uncertainties currently related to cloud computing for providers and for individual and organizational users. With the current lack of policies or court decisions about cloud computing, however, the lack of guidance presents an impediment to the development of the potential of and to user adoption of cloud computing (Takabi, 2012)

Active Stake holders of cloud computing Model

In the world of cloud computing, All business, personal and government entities can be the part of stake holders. Cloud applications are available on the internet and any one can access and use the applications. Some of the major stake holders of the cloud computing model are as follows

Individual users

Business or corporate users

Organizations or business firms

Nonprofit organizations

Cloud Service providers

Policy issues in Cloud computing

The aim of this paper is to identify the need of security policies of cloud computing at global level. Because, there are not a proper regulations regarding data security and global standards for the cloud solution providers.

As, we know that in today's world the technology and software solutions are moving from on premise or desktop based applications to the cloud based solutions and all private information of the organization are exist on the cloud (or internet) which is easily accessible for everyone. But the problem is that, are cloud based solutions really securable or is there any global level regulations to ensure data security in the cloud which enforce the cloud solution providers to meet the global level standards.

The user always wants the data to be secure at its most basic level, this means that the data entrust to a cloud provider should not be subject to unauthorized access, modification and corruption. However, other risks are also inherent in cloud computing (Bernice, 2011). So the research brings attention regarding the need of the global level security policies for the cloud solution providers.

Current Perspective in a policy cloud

There are significant uncertainties present in public policy and technological capacity in provision of cloud computing. In some of the cases, the policy mandates are not compatible with the technical cloud solutions For example, Information policy in the USA, it is continuing to fall further and further behind in policies related to cloud computing and technology developments and how these developments are being employed. The gap between policy and technology has more noted and therefore they are working to make laws reactively on a pre electronic mentality. Although there is a huge gap between policies and cloud computing technology like there is no checking balance institution or regulation for cloud service providers globally which ensure the data integrity and security for the customers (Braman, 2008) and therefore there is not a active policy present for the cloud computing providers.

Consideration of possible policy

Currently policy makers for the cloud computing focuses on a range of policy aspects of cloud computing specific issues raised by gaps in current laws and regulations. In the case of cloud computing, technological innovation, commercial interest and consumer interest are all outpacing current information policy (Bojanova, 2011). The primary goal of the global policy regulation is to raise awareness of these issues at the intersection of computing and policy. The global level policies will first draw the boundaries for cloud service providers and its nature of services which are provided by them. Finally, the global regulation describes how issues of cloud computing and policy might be reconciled to facilitate the development of cloud computing as a beneficial development for individual, corporate, and governmental computer users.

Proposed Policy Model

A range of cloud providers already offer a variety of services, with users employing clouds for massive database management, data mining and the deployment of Web services among other activities (Baker, 2008).

Cloud computing raises a range of security policy issues which include issues of

privacy, data security, anonymity, telecommunications capacity, government surveillance, reliability and liability among others. This section of the paper introduces and examines these issues individually. While some of the trade press and popular media accounts of cloud computing have raised potential issues of privacy and intellectual property (Kevin J.Dalaney, 2007), the range of security issues raised by cloud computing merits significant consideration.

Cloud computing sits at the difficult intersection of new computing concepts and data security policies and relevant existing laws do not appear to be applicable to this new idea. Therefore the research study will suggest the global level regulations for cloud service providers which meets the standards at global level as described in below figure 1

Figure 1: All Cloud Service Providers under the regulation authority (proposed model)

Critical evaluation

In case of data lost the user may suffer if there is no Service Level Agreement (SLA),

the loss will be of user, because we are not able to put claims against the cloud service provider

data loss or leakage can have a devastating impact on a business. Beyond the damage

to one’s brand and reputation, a loss could significantly impact employee, partner and

customer morale and trust (Jerry Archer, 2010)

It is hoped that providing serious consideration and research about these issues, cloud computing is in its developmental stages will allow the policy concerns to be addressed in a timely and satisfactory manner before cloud computing becomes too large or too widely used to regulate effectively (Paul T.Jaeger, 2011)

Conclusion and Recommendation

The information or data collection is analyzed through literature review and web research. This is providing a way to review the lacking in policies for cloud computing and also help us out to come up with some facts and figures. On the basis of this we know that there is really need to develop the strong regulation body for the cloud service providers to ensure the data reliability and security. The above information and research shows that we must build the proposed model as shown in above figure 1 to ensure the data reliability in the cloud.