Scalable Computing and Communications: Theory and Practice

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Privacy and Confidentiality in Cloud Computing

Khaled M. Khan and Qutaibah Malluhi

14.1    INTRODUCTION

Cloud computing is an emerging computation model in which applications, data, computational processes, computing resources, and operating platforms are offered to consumers as services. This model provides the opportunity for utility-like virtually unlimited computational power and capacity at a lower cost with greater flexibility as well as elasticity. This new paradigm promotes and facilitates cost-effective outsourcing of computations and data in a shared infrastructure, enabling enterprises to cut information technology costs while focusing on their core business functionalities. Therefore, enterprises are increasingly becoming interested in running their business applications on the cloud.

In spite of the obvious benefits offered by this open computing environment, privacy and confidentiality of consumers'data and processes are the paramount concerns for propelling cloud computing adoption in a wider scale. Cloud computing poses several privacy and confidentiality challenges that can be the major stumbling blocks for moving applications into the cloud. These concerns include the risk of data breaches, malicious corruption of computed results, uncertainty about data privacy, and lack of consumer control on their data assets residing on third-party infrastructure. Consumers'data processed by cloud computing are often sensitive, such as containing ...