Secure Cloud Computing Framework

The project is based on the title “Developing security framework to secure cloud computing-based environments” which describes how the frameworks help in securing environment of cloud computing. The research methodology is used for cloud computing security is Research onion which specifies all the components such as approach, philosophy, research strategies, time horizons, and data collection methods. The aim of the project report is to create a framework to provide security to cloud computing systems.

Objective

To analyse and explore cloud computing from business perspective.
Examine improved efficiency of cloud computing.
Provide better enhancement practices to the service provider for security.

The other objective of the project is to provide better storage systems.

Research Questions

The research question is necessary for making a further research criterion. It helps to obtain better research ideas related to cybersecurity (Vuli?, et al. 2019).

Q. What are the issues faced by Cloud computing?

Q. What is the methodology used to prevent the Security risks.

Q. What is Cloud Computing?

Q. What are the frameworks used to provide security to the cloud computing services?

Q. How cloud computing faces a challenge of security?

Q. What are the research methodologies implemented to attain better results.

Proposed Methodology

The process of research is involving the phases of accomplishing the research objective and analyzing various vulnerability issues in cloud computing that suggest the security implementation model. The research is based on some phases such as study, Analysis, development, and design, testing, Implementation.

Figure 1: Methodology

(Source: Alghofaili, et al. 2021)

The research methods are used for security purposes are primary and secondary research. The research is started from the planning, conducting as well as reporting phase. In planning phase, firstly identify the objectives of the research and its aim. The primary research methodology is used to get the reviews of the users who consistently use the cloud services by using the questionnaire. The primary research methods involve interviews, questionnaires, etc. The mostly used research methodology is secondary research which involves journals and articles and books. The data is gathered from journals and articles which are used to propose the methodology or frameworks for enhancing security of cloud-based systems. Models are also implemented to reduce the issues of security. Some data security issues are at different levels of cloud architecture are (Vuli?, et al. 2019):

At data level, security issues are data in transit as well as data at rest. At the application level, the issues have occurred in hardware and software. Some data level issues are data breaching, data leakage, data virtualization, data confidentiality, data integrity, data availability, lack of privacy and data segregation, network-based attack, and third-party backup.

Figure 2: Framework of secure Cloud Mitigation

(Source: Shakya, 2019)

The above framework shows the transfer of files between two clouds named the source file system and the Destination file system. In which both the clouds contain access control, encryption module, and mitigation decision but the destination file system is containing the decryption module. In both the clouds, SSL negotiation, SSL creation requests in between them. The encrypted data is sent to the destination file system with more security (Gupta, et al. 2019).

For this cloud computing system, the research onion is containing the six layers that can be explained as philosophy, approach, Strategy, choice of methods, time horizons, and Data analysis and collection.

Figure 3: Research Onion

(Source: Thesismind, 2019)

The philosophy of this study is ontology because it is based on the reality of the study. It clarifies the difference between reality and how to observe reality. The approach used for cloud computing is the deductive approach that enables to development of an analysis of the existing theories and then expresses the approach of research to test that theory. The strategies implemented for the methodology are surveys and case studies. It is a mixed type of method because it combines the qualitative and quantitative methodology and creates an exact data set. The time horizon is specified in the research onion is cross-sectional. The data collection techniques used for the project are primary data and secondary data (Vuli?, et al. 2019).

Background Information

Cloud computing is model that allow convenient, on-demand as well as ubiquitous network access to shared pool of resources of configurable computing like servers, applications, networks, storage, as well as services. This report is based on developing the security framework for securing the environments of cloud computing. Some security issues are identified in cloud computing are data loss & data breaches, Cloud services abuse & insider threat, Denial of Service attacks, and shared vulnerability.

Literature Review

What is Cloud Computing (CC)?

CC is term that used for delivering all hosted services on internet. The services are mainly divided into various categories named IaaS (Infrastructure as a service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service).

Figure 4: Cloud Computing

(Source: Baird, 2019)

The clouds are categorized into three types named as:

Public Cloud: The Public cloud is a platform that uses the model of cloud computing to create resources like applications, virtual machines, and storage. It is obtainable to users remotely. Some benefits of the public cloud are:

It helps to reduce the requirement of organizations to maintain and invest their own IT resources.
It is more scalable to meet the user demands and workload.
The resources are not wasted due to the users only pay for usable resources.
It is easily accessible and provided to multiple users at a time.

Private Cloud: Private cloud is dedicated to individual user organization. It also provides high security level to data with the help of internal hosting & firewalls. In other words, the private cloud is managed or used by a single organization. Some benefits of the private cloud are:

It is more secure than the public cloud which restricts the network and user access.
It is expensive as compared to the public cloud.
Some private clouds are the Eucalyptus system.

Hybrid Cloud: It consist of both’s combination private as well as public resources in unique ways. It provides management, orchestration, and application portability among clouds (Bautista-Villalpando and Abran, 2021).

Models of Cloud Computing

Cloud service related models are mainly defined as SPI (Software, Infrastructure, and Platforms). The services are given by cloud computing are software as a service, infrastructure as a service, and Platform as a service.

Figure 5: Cloud Service Model

(Source: Fu, 2017)

Software as a Service: It mainly offers some applications that accessed on internet and these are not managed by associated organization but by the service provider who manages it. It provides the services like infrastructure management, data availability, software maintenance, and network security. The SaaS is based on some factors like usage time, processing of a number of transactions, users, and data stored amount.
Platform as a Service: It is a kind of halfway between the software as a service as well as infrastructure as a service. It enables the users for creating & delivering applications without the installation & working with IDEs by using the cloud-based environment. It has a minimum market share among the three models. It provides some useful applications named Microsoft Azure, and Apache Stratos.
Infrastructure as a Service: It also offers a unique way of obtaining some of computing capabilities on basis of demand or over the internet. The resources provided by this model are networks, virtual private servers, storage facilities, and processing power. This model provides the facility that infrastructure is managed by service provider on basis of the contract of availability and resources amount (Bautista-Villalpando and Abran, 2021).

Benefits related to Cloud Computing

Cost-saving: It is one of benefits of cloud computing is decreased cost because the businesses do not require to create their individual IT infrastructure and reduce capital expenses meaningfully (Mamun-Ibn-Abdullah and Kabir, 2021).

Scalable: Cloud computing enables greater flexibility for every size of business. When the business needs extra bandwidth, storage space, and computing power. The resources are provided depending upon the budget and needs.
Security: It is a major concern for the business. The vendors of clouds are proving enhanced security such as authentication, data encryption, and access management to guarantee data is stored and handled securely.
Mobility: It permits the users to access data of corporate from the device at any time by using the internet. The employees remain productive on go.
Increases Collaboration: The applications of the cloud enables a business to communicate seamlessly and access securely. Cloud computing allows multiple users for editing documents simultaneously and in a manner of transparency.
Disaster Recovery: The loss of data is irreparable damage to any organization. The disruptive events are included software or hardware failure, power outages, natural disasters, and business continuity.
Automatic Updates: Cloud computing attains a feature of auto-updating that helps the staff of the organization not to update the system manually.

Figure 6: Architecture of cloud security

(Source: Shakya, 2019)

The above figure shows the cloud security architecture which contains four sections and each section has its own components such as software security is containing the security tools identity federation, access control, identity authentication, as well as identity management. Anti-DDoS, anti-spam and also Anti-virus. Platform security contains the framework security, component security, environment security, interface-security, and many more. Infrastructure security contains data encryption, data destruction, and data segregation. The compliance and auditing contain user management, access management, monitoring services, and authorization management (Rupra and Omamo, 2019).

Security Issues in Cloud Computing

Theft of data from the applications of the cloud by any malicious activity (Mamun-Ibn-Abdullah and Kabir, 2021).
The control on the user who is accessing the sensitive data is incomplete.
Cloud computing is not provided the monitoring feature on data transit.
Lack of skills in the staff to handle the cloud applications security.
The cloud is not able to maintain regulatory compliance.
Advanced attacks and Threats.
Denial Service (DoS) attack.

Amazon Macie

The amazon Macie is fully handled data privacy as well as data security service that uses pattern matching and machine learning to protect and also discover all sensitive data or information in AWS. Some benefits related to amazon Macie are:

It discovers the sensitive information or data at some scale.
The visibility of the posture of data security.
It is easy to manage and set up.

Security Model to Prevent Issues of Cloud Computing

Cloud Multiple Tenancy model of NIST
Cloud Risk Accumulation Model of CSA
Jerico Forum’s Cloud Cube Model:
Mapping Model of Security, cloud, and compliance (Rupra and Omamo, 2019)

The objectives of the framework are:

To secure the security interfaces and make an advanced security mechanism.
To provide the better trust, privacy and security culture of the cloud systems.
To audit the cloud security and resource concentration.

The difference between the existing framework and new framework are:

The new framework is provided more security as compared to the existing framework.
The tools and techniques are used by the frameworks are updated and better.
The new framework is manages the security more efficiently of a cloud.

Project Timeline

On the basis of the research's main structure, it is needed to conduct the research on the basis of time so that it includes major requirements, analysis, and improvements are done. To ensure the successful delivery of the project, a time schedule is essential for the additional research improvements, and obtaining an overview of time for every section & subsection is needed. The time schedule is described below (Gupta, et al. 2019):

Table 1: Timeline of the cloud computing frameworks for enhancing the security of the cloud-based systems

Research Topics	Time Plan
Research Topics	Week-1	Week-2	Week-3	Week-4	Week-5	Week-6	Week-7	Week-8	Week-9	Week-10
Selection of topic
Searching on data
Conduct Literature Review
Examine the role of Cloud computing
Identify the security challenges for security purposes
Benefits of Cloud computing
Discover the Improvement
Practices using cloud computing
Data collection
Data analysis
Write a complete report

References

Alghofaili, Y., Albattah, A., Alrajeh, N., Rassam, M.A. and Al-rimy, B.A.S., 2021. Secure Cloud Infrastructure: A Survey on Issues, Current Solutions, and Open Challenges. Applied Sciences, 11(19), p.9005. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11199005

Baird, C. 2019. A Primer on Cloud Computing. [Online]. Available at: https://medium.com/@colinbaird_51123/a-primer-on-cloud-computing-9a34e90303c8 [Accessed on: 5 April 2022]

Bautista-Villalpando, L. and Abran, A., 2021. A data security framework for cloud computing services. Computer Systems Science & Engineering. http://dx.doi.org/10.32604/csse.2021.015437

Fu, A. 2017. 7 Different Types of Cloud Computing Structures. [Online]. Available at: https://www.uniprint.net/en/7-types-cloud-computing-structures/ [Accessed on: 5 April 2022]

Gupta, A., Siddiqui, S.T., Alam, S., and Shuaib, M., 2019. Cloud computing security using blockchain. J. Emerging Technol. Innovative Res, 6(6), pp.791-794. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shams-Siddiqui/publication/335502544_Cloud_Computing_Security_using_Blockchain/links/5d69846ea6fdcc547d6d08b0/Cloud-Computing-Security-using-Blockchain.pdf

Mamun-Ibn-Abdullah, M. and Kabir, M.H., 2021. A Multilayer Security Framework for Cloud Computing in the Internet of Things (IoT) Domain. Journal of Computer and Communications, 9(7), pp.31-42. https://doi.org/10.4236/jcc.2021.97004

Rupra, S.S. and Omamo, A., 2019. A FRAMEWORK FOR IMPROVING SECURITY IN CLOUD COMPUTING FOR SMES (FISCCS) USING A SECURITY INDEX. http://www.gjesrm.com/Issues%20PDF/Archive-2019/May-2019/1.pdf

Shakya, S., 2019. An efficient security framework for data migration in a cloud computing environment. Journal of Artificial Intelligence, 1(01), pp.45-53. https://doi.org/10.36548/jaicn.2019.1.006

Thesismind. 2019. Analysis of Saunders Research Onion. [Online]. Available at: https://thesismind.com/analysis-of-saunders-research-onion/ [Accessed on: 5 April 2022]

Vuli?, I., Prodanovi?, R. and Tot, I., 2019, December. An Example of a Methodology for Developing the Security of a Distributed Business System. In 5th IPMA SENET Project Management Conference (SENET 2019) (pp. 209-216). Atlantis Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.2991/senet-19.2019.34

Developing a security framework for secure cloud computing environments

Table of Contents

Summary