Security Impact of Cloud Computing

Interesting paper titled “Understanding Cloud-Computing Vulnerabilities” appears in IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine (June 2010 issue). Authors of article are Bernd Grobauer, Tobias Walloschek, Elmar Stöcker, from Siemens (Munich, Germany).

Abstract of article says:

The current discourse about cloud computing security issues makes a well-founded assessment of the security impact of cloud computing difficult. Firstly, as seems to be the case for many discussions about risk, basic vocabulary such as “risk”, “threat”, and “vulnerability” are often used as if they were interchangeable, without regard to their respective definitions. Secondly, not every issue that is raised is really specific to cloud computing. A well-founded understanding of the “delta” that cloud computing really adds with respect to security issues can be achieved by carrying out an analysis of how each factor that contributes to risk is influenced by cloud computing. We argue that the most significant impact concerns “vulnerabilities”: cloud computing makes certain well-understood vulnerabilities more significant and adds new vulnerabilities. The article provides a precise definition of what makes a vulnerabity cloud-specific and provides many examples of such vulnerabilities.

You’ll need subscription to read full article at IEEE Computer Web site. DOI Bookmark is http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MSP.2010.115.

Citation information is:

• Bernd Grobauer, Tobias Walloschek, Elmar Stöcker, “Understanding Cloud-Computing Vulnerabilities,” IEEE Security and Privacy, 10 Jun. 2010. IEEE computer Society Digital Library. IEEE Computer Society, <http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MSP.2010.115>.

This paper touches topic which is very hot nowadays because of increased importance of cloud computing and many discussions and different views of its security advantages and drawbacks.