Cloud Computing

 CLOUD COMPUTING 

The need to achieve excellent Quality of Service (QoS) to facilitate effective Quality of Experience (QoE) is one of the notable factors that has brought about substantial evolution in the computing paradigms. For instance, the cloud computing paradigm has been presented to ensure an effective development and delivery of various innovative Internet services. Also, the unprecedented development of various applications and growing smart mobile devices for supporting Internet-of- Things (IoT) have presented significant constraints regarding latency, bandwidth, and connectivity on the centralized-based paradigm of cloud computing. To address the limitations, research interests have been shifting toward decentralized paradigms. A good instance of a decentralized paradigm is edge computing. Conceptually, edge computing focuses on rendering several services at the network edge to alleviate the associated limitations of cloud computing. Also, a number of such edge computing implementations such as cloudlet computing (CC), mobile cloud computing (MCC), and mobile edge computing  (MEC) have been presented. Besides, another edge computing evolution is fog computing. It offers an efficient architecture that mainly focuses on both horizontal and vertical resource  distribution in the Cloud-to-Things continuum. Cloud and fog are complementing computing schemes. They establish a service continuum between the endpoints and the cloud. In this regard, they offer services that are jointly advantageous and symbiotic to ensure effective and ubiquitous control, communication, computing, and storage, along the established continuum in this light, it goes beyond mere cloud extension but serves as a merging platform for both cloud and IoT to facilitate and ensure effective interaction in the system.

Nevertheless, these paradigms demand further research efforts due to the required resource management that is demanding and the massive traffic to be supported by the network.

In addition, there have been significant research efforts toward the sixth generation (6G) networks. Also, it is envisaged that various technologies such as device-to-device communications, Big Data, cloud computing, edge caching, edge computing, and IoT will be well-supported by the 6G mobile networks. 6G is envisioned to be based on major innovative technologies such as super IoT, mobile ultra-broadband, and artificial intelligence (AI). Besides, it is envisaged that terahertz (THz) communications should be a viable solution for supporting mobile ultra-broadband. Also, super IoT can be achieved with symbiotic radio and satellite-assisted communications. Besides, machine learning (ML) methods are expected to be promising solutions for AI networks. Based on the innovative technologies, beyond 5G network is envisaged to offer a considerable improvement on the 5G by employing AI to automate and optimize the system operation. cloud computing presents an enabling platform that offers ubiquitous and on-demand network access to a shared pool of computing resources such as storages, servers, networks, applications, and services. These interconnected resource pools can be conveniently configured and provisioned with minimal interaction. Besides cost-effectiveness regarding support for pay-per-use policy and expenditure savings, some of the key inducements for the adoption of the cloud computing paradigm are easy and ubiquitous access to applications and data.

Latency:

One of the main challenges of the IoT is the associated stringent latency requirements. End-to-end latencies below a few tens of milliseconds are required by some   time-sensitive (high- reliability and low-latency) IoT applications like drone flight control applications, vehicle-to-roadside communications, gaming applications, virtual reality applications, and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and other real-time applications.

 Bandwidth:

The unprecedented increase in the number of connected IoT devices results in the generation of / huge data traffic. The created traffic can range from tens of megabytes to a gigabyte of data per second. For instance, about one petabyte is been trafficked by Google per month while AT&T’s network consumes about 200 petabytes in 2010. Besides, it is estimated that the U.S. smart grid will generate about 1000 petabytes per year. Consequently, for effective support of this traffic, relatively huge network bandwidth is demanded. Moreover, there are some data privacy concerns and regulations that prohibit excessive data transmission.

Resource constrained devices:

 The IoT system comprises billions of objects and devices that have limited resources mainly regarding storage (memory), power, and computing capacity. Based on these limitations, it is challenging for constrained devices to simultaneously execute the entire desired functionality.

Besides, it will be impractical to depend exclusively on their relatively limited resources to accomplish their entire computing demands. It will also be cost-prohibitive and unrealistic for the devices to interact directly with the cloud, owing to the associated complex protocols and resource-intensive processing. 

Security and privacy:

The present Internet cybersecurity schemes are mainly designed for securing consumer electronics, data centers, and enterprise networks. The solutions target perimeter-based protection provisioning using firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs), and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs). Besides, based on the associated advantages, certain resource-intensive security functions have been shifted to the cloud. In this regard, they are focusing on perimeter-based protection by requesting authentication and authorization through the clouds. However, the security paradigm is insufficient for IoT-based security challenges.

Cloud computing is a technology paradigm that is offering useful services to consumers. Cloud Computing has the long-term potential to change the way information technology is provided and used. The entire cloud ecosystem consists of majorly four different entities which plays vital role to fulfill the requirements of all the stake holders. The role played by each individual depends on their position in the market and their business strategy. These most prominent entities in the cloud ecosystem are:

Cloud Service Provider: it provides cloud services available to cater the needs of different users from different domain by acquiring and managing the computing resources both hardware and software and arranging for networked access to the cloud customers.

Cloud Integrator: the facilitators, one who identify, customize and integrate the cloud services as per the requirement and in accordance with the customers’ needs. It plays the important role of matchmaking and negotiating the relationship between the consumer and producer of the services.

 Cloud Carrier: it is an intermediary which facilitates the connectivity and takes the cloud services at the doorsteps of end-user by providing access through different network access and devices. Cloud Customer: the actual user of services extended by the service provider which may be an individuals or organizations which in turn may have their own end-users like employees or other customers.

  Types of service models:

 Cloud service providers harness the benefit of huge computing resources span over large geographical area to provide seamless, efficient and reliable services to customers at marginal price. The computing resource deployed over the Internet comprises hardware and application software and OS used in virtualization, storage and compute purposes. There are basically three different service models of offering high-volume low-cost services to the end user:

 Software as a Service (SaaS)

 In this model, various applications are hosted by a cloud service provider and publicized to the customers over internet, wherein end user can access the software using thin client through web browsers. Here all the software and relevant data are hosted centrally on the cloud server. CRM, Office Suite, Email, Games, Contact Data Management, Financial Accounting, Text Processing etc. are typically falls under this category.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

A PaaS is typically is a programming platform for developers. This platform facilitates the ecosystem for the programmers/developers to create, test, run and manage the applications. It thus provides the access to the runtime environment for application development and deployment tools. Here developer does not have any access to underlying layers of OS and Hardware, but simply can run and deploy their own applications. Microsoft Azure, Salesforce and Google App Engine are some of the typical examples of PaaS.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

 IaaS facilitates availability of the IT resources such as server, processing power, data storage and networks as an on-demand service. Here user of this service can dynamically choose a CPU, memory storage configuration according to needs. A cloud user buys these virtualized and standardized services as and when required. For example, a cloud customer can rent server time, working memory and data storage and had an operating system run on top with applications of their own choice.

 Types of deployments

 Furthermore, these services can be deployed into Public Clouds, Private Clouds or Hybrid Clouds; each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

 Public cloud

In the Public Cloud delivery mode, all the physical infrastructure are owned by the provider of the services which were provided off-site over the Internet hosted at cloud vendor’s premises. Here the customer has no control and limited visibility over where the service is hosted as all these massive hardware installations are distributed throughout the country or across the globe seamlessly. This massive size enables economies of scale that permit maximum scalability to meet varying requirements of different customers and thus provides greatest level of efficiency, maximum reliability through shared resources but with rider cost of added vulnerability.

 Private cloud

 In case of Private Cloud mode, entire infrastructure is owned, managed and operated exclusively by the organization or by a third-party vendor or both together and is hosted on the organization premise using virtualization layer. It also facilitates flexibility, scalability, provisioning, automation and monitoring and thus offers the greatest level of control, configurability support, high availability or fault tolerant solutions and advanced security which is missing in public cloud. Basically, very concept of private clouds is driven by concerns around security and keeping assets within the firewall which results it to significantly more expensive with typically modest economies of scale.

 Hybrid cloud

As name suggest, Hybrid Cloud includes a variety of product mix from both Public and Private Cloud options sourced from multiple providers at added cost to keep track of multiple different security platforms by ensuring all aspects of business to communicate with each other seamlessly. In case of Hybrid approach, operational flexibility, scalability, efficiency and security is properly balanced by hosting mission critical applications and sensitive data protected on the Private Cloud and generic application development, big data operations on non- sensitive data and testing on the Public Cloud. Hybrid Cloud thus leverage benefits of both Public and Private Cloud by maintain balance between the efficiency, cost saving, security, privacy, and control.

 Aspects of cloud security

 A. Cloud Security Simplified:

 ·         Access Control

 ·         System Protection

 ·         Personal Security

 ·         Information Integrity

 ·         Cloud Security Management

 ·         Network Protection

 ·         Identity Management

 

B. Vulnerabilities and threats:

 ·         Data Breaches/Data Loss

 ·         Denial of Service Attacks/Malware Injection

 ·         Hijacking Account

 ·         Inadequate Change Control and Misconfiguration

 ·         Insecure Interfaces and Poor APIs implementation

 ·         Insider Threats

 ·         Insufficient Credentials and Identity/Compromised accounts

 ·         Weak control plane/Insufficient Due Diligence

 ·         Shared Vulnerabilities

 ·         Nefarious use or Abuse of Cloud Services

 ·         Lack of cloud security strategy/Regulatory violations

 ·         Limited cloud usage visibility