Chapter 8: Cloud Security Concerns: Essentials of Cloud Computing
8.1 Introduction As organizations increasingly migrate their workloads and data to the cloud, security becomes a paramount concern. While cloud computing offers numerous benefits—including scalability, cost-efficiency, and accessibility—it also introduces new vulnerabilities and threats. This chapter explores the critical cloud security concerns including data breaches and privacy issues, access control and identity management, and the importance of compliance with industry regulations and standards. 8.2 Data Breaches and Privacy Issues 8.2.1 What is a Data Breach? A data breach is an unauthorized access and retrieval of sensitive data by a malicious actor or accidental exposure due to misconfigured systems. In cloud environments, breaches can involve customer information, trade secrets, intellectual property, financial records, and more. 8.2.2 Causes of Data Breaches in Cloud Misconfigured cloud storage : Publicly exposed S3 buckets or blob storage. Weak encry...