Cloud computing security threats and responses

Cloud computing is one of today's most exciting technologies due to its ability to reduce costs associated with computing while increasing flexibility and scalability for computer processes. During the past few years, cloud computing has grown from being a promising business idea to one of the fastest growing parts of the IT industry. IT organizations have expresses concern about critical issues (such as security) that exist with the widespread implementation of cloud computing. These types of concerns originate from the fact that data is stored remotely from the customer's location; in fact, it can be stored at any location. Security, in particular, is one of the most argued-about issues in the cloud computing field; several enterprises look at cloud computing warily due to projected security risks. The risks of compromised security and privacy may be lower overall, however, with cloud computing than they would be if the data were to be stored on individual machines instead of in a so - called "cloud" (the network of computers used for remote storage and maintenance). Comparison of the benefits and risks of cloud computing with those of the status quo are necessary for a full evaluation of the viability of cloud computing. Consequently, some issues arise that clients need to consider as they contemplate moving to cloud computing for their businesses. In this paper I summarize reliability, availability, and security issues for cloud computing (RAS issues), and propose feasible and available solutions for some of them.