A survey on top security threats in cloud computing

Cloud computing enables the sharing of resources such as storage, network, applications and software through internet. Cloud users can lease multiple resources according to their requirements, and pay only for the services they use. However, despite all cloud benefits there are many security concerns related to hardware, virtualization, network, data and service providers that act as a significant barrier in the adoption of cloud in the IT industry. In this paper, we survey the top security concerns related to cloud computing. For each of these security threats we describe, i) how it can be used to exploit cloud components and its effect on cloud entities such as providers and users, and ii) the security solutions that must be taken to prevent these threats. These solutions include the security techniques from existing literature as well as the best security practices that must be followed by cloud administrators. Keywords—Cloud computing; Data security; Network security; Cloud service provider security