Free Essay on Security and Reliability of Cloud Data Centers

Data centers get described as network structures that are designed to store and offer a distribution channel for the stored data. The data stored in these centers constitutes large contents, for example of corporations and institutions. Data centers are described to constitute telecommunication, networking, and computer systems. In the rapidly dynamic world especially in terms of technology cloud and data centers are efficient in computing and storage services as they enhance storage capacities, efficiency and computer, and networking services in the new technological environment. This is enhanced because cloud computing is mobile-based, flexible, and secure.

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Nonetheless, cloud services and data centers operate about cloud-based software services. This overall has improved technology and business environment in the dynamic world. However, dealing with cloud data centers is a situation that gets subjected to challenges that go beyond computing and networking activities. For instance, cloud data centers are subjected to a challenge of security and reliability of the data, through redundancy, distribution through networking and computing activities, among other architectural decisions and selections as discussed below.

Despite cloud data centers offering better access and more security than traditional servers and storage services, it still faces security problems and reliability of the data. First, cloud data centers get subjected to attempted attacks daily. These attacks normally pose a security threat to the stored data. The data stored in data centers are required to be secure, for instance, institutions or corporations' data. However, attempted attacks are a challenge to the security of the data. More so, these attacks are expected to increase because there is an increase in consumers and businesses that normally complete their transitions to the cloud [1]. For instance, Microsoft Azure is an example of a cloud format that is receiving numerous fights over these attacks. Secondly, the reliability of the cloud data center services is another challenge. Despite these services being touted available, it is justified to say that systems have to be imperfect. Some systems are attributed to be a human debugging error, especially those with many websites. This is a threat that affects cloud networks.

Nonetheless, redundancy is another architectural choice that gets poised to a challenge in cloud data centers. Currently, in the data centers, it is a common practice. It gets described as a repetition of data in a database. Data redundancy is normally done to counter data loss [2]. Therefore, enterprises have to practice redundancy to mitigate the risks of data loss. This presents the data into more chances of attack threats. Redundancy also increases the chances of data corruption occurrence and results in inconsistency f data. It also results in an unnecessary increase in databases sizes and reduces database efficiency. This greatly affects the reliability and security of the data in the cloud data centers. Data breaches and intrusion are also a challenge to the security of data in cloud data centers. There is a high probability of malicious users attacking the data in the cloud as it constitutes many users. More so, accidental transmissions issues may result in a security threat. The possibility of data intrusion occurs due to multiple users on cloud servers.

To enhance the functionality of the cloud data centers and address the above challenges, there is a need to undertake several solutions. This will ensure the reliability of the data and improve the security hence improving on agility, reliance, and scalability of cloud data centers. There is a need for encryption to secure the data. This may involve encrypting data before storing in the cloud [3]. It is also important for the respective data owners to offer authority to respective groups to access the data. Data accessibility control can get done through heterogeneous data-centric security. More so, data integrity, user protection, and authentication can also be effective methodologies of application in cloud data centers. The distributed access control architecture is another vital solution that can effectively manage the accessibility of data when applied in cloud computing. Attackers of the cloud data centers and unauthorized personnel can be identified through the use of credentials and attributed based policies that can be set by the management staff [4]. There should be an introduction of a data-driven framework that can become designed in such a way that it allows for secure sharing and processing of the stored data between cloud users. Another important solution is the introduction of a large technical staff for the management in the data centers since it is a complex methodology.

To address the above challenges through the implementation of the solutions discussed, there will be the use of huge finances to install the solutions in place. However, there will be an advantage of reduced or eliminated instances of insecurity in cloud data centers and enhance data reliability.

On future reference, cloud data centers may become faced with security challenge and reliability based on the storage space for data. Since the data become stored in physical/hardware infrastructure, there is a security risk, for instance, in the data stored in virtual machines. This will be as a result of data stored being huge. Generally, this will occurs due to the increased rate of more data getting stored in data centers [5]. This may get addressed through the integration of RSA (Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman) based storage security.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be justified that despite the cloud data center having numerous advantages in the field of technology and engineering and playing an important role in the business environment, it gets subjected to security and reliability challenges. There is a need to address the above challenges, probably through the outlined solutions. Nonetheless, there is an expectation of occurrence of new challenges as a result of technological changes over time. Therefore concrete standards for cloud data centers need to be regularly developed to enhance its performance.

Summary

In summary, data centers are hardware-based network structures that are designed to store large contents of data and enhance the reliability of the data. Cloud data centers have been important structures for data storage in the rapid changing world. They have enhanced the flexibility, accessibility, and agility of the stored data hence improves the efficiency of data storage. However, cloud data centers become presented into security and reliability challenges, especially due to the rapidly changing technological environment, large amounts of data stores and other architectural choices such as redundancy. Redundancy has led to over storage of data in the databases in these data centers hence reduces the efficiency of reliability of data as well as presenting these data centers into a higher risk of attacks. These attacks are a security threat to the stored data. Data intrusion and breaching is also another challenge associated with cloud data centers because malicious users seek to intrude with other peoples data and hack their information. However, in the discussion, there are various solutions stated that could be implemented to address the problems. These include; encryption to ensure the data is secure, the use of RSA, the integration of data accessibility control, large technical staff in the management, integration of data-driven framework as well as a credential and attributed based policies. Also, it is important to note that there should be expectations of future challenges since cloud data centers get based on technology that keeps on changing.

References

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Yang, Jianfeng, and Zhibin Chen. "Cloud computing research and security issues." 2010 International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Software Engineering. IEEE, 2010.

Kandukuri, Balachandra Reddy, and Atanu Rakshit. "Cloud security issues." 2009 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing. IEEE, 2009.

Shahzad, Farrukh. "State-of-the-art survey on cloud computing security Challenges, approaches, and solutions." Procedia Computer Science 37 (2014): 357-362.

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