Monday, October 19, 2015

My Master Thesis - New Threats in Cloud Computing

I was unable to publish my master thesis because of a 5-year non diusclosure agreement with the company the sponsored me. Since that agreement expired you can have a look over my master thesis, entitled: New Threats in Cloud Computing - With focus on Cloud Misuse and Cloud Vulnerabilities from the Client Side


Abstract


With the continuous growth of Cloud Computing, more and more companies decide to
migrate to a Cloud-based solution. While the obvious advantages of Cloud Computing
are apparent, the disadvantages, especially concerning security, are not always so. We
will look at Cloud Computing from a Small or Medium Enterprise (SME) security point
of view. Security wise, such an Enterprise will have, without a doubt, a lot of concerns
when using Cloud Computing.

The goal is to propose new Client-Side threats that can arise from a SME using Cloud
Computing, focusing on data leakage. The threats can then be mitigated from the
Client-Side, reducing the risks of data leakage, increased costs and loss of reputation.
The threats presented can be divided into two parts: Cloud Misuse threats and Cloud
Vulnerabilities threats. Cloud Misuse threats occur from a user (employee) misusing
the features offered in Cloud Computing. Such threats typically include performing
accidental or malicious operations on a particular Service. They can often lead to
increased costs for a SME when using Cloud Computing as Cloud Providers charge
Clients based on how much a Client uses a given Service. Cloud Vulnerability threats
are threats that occur on the Cloud-Side itself, because of a given vulnerability within
the Cloud, but that can be mitigated from the Client-Side to ensure the confidentiality
and availability of data. A common side effect of such threats is data leakage.

In order to fulfill the above proposed goal we describe a typical architecture for a SME
when using Cloud Computing as well as an abstract view of Services within the Cloud.
We do this by introducing the concept of Cloud Tasks (Storage, Compute, Privacy and
Network Tasks) which represent an abstract depiction of operations (tasks) done within
the Cloud.

Finally, we further detail some of the solutions suggested for the proposed threats. As
some of the threats have Encryption as a solution, we describe different encryption
methods and how they can be applied to our Cloud Computing scenario.


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