INVESTIGATE THE SECURITY CHALLENGES IN SAAS PRIVATE CLOUD USING OWNCLOUD

Abstract

Cloud storage is becoming a fast emerging resource used for storage of information by corporates and organizations as a substitute to get data available anywhere and anytime. Cloud entities such as cloud service providers, users and business associates share the offered resources at diverse levels of technological operations. The cloud computing model is considered to be a very capable and able internet-based computing platform, which offers numerous benefits like mobility, flexibility, reliability and cost-effectiveness. However, like any other technology, cloud computing is not without a challenge or as problem free as it may seem. This paper intended to investigate the security challenges in private SaaS clouds and this was done with the aid of OwnCloud, which is an open-source cloud storage platform. Users were given access to the experimental cloud to collect details on the threats and vulnerabilities associated with the cloud. The challenges identified were specific to small businesses and SMEs. The research yielded numerous challenges including insider threats, improper data deletion, bandwidth issues, hacking, repudiation issues and government laws. Further to this, strategies and countermeasures to mitigate these challenges were suggested so that small organizations can understand their cloud security better as well as implement security in an effective manner.