1.1 Introduction
Cloud Computing appears as a computational paradigm as well as a distribution architecture and its main objective is to provide secure, quick, convenient data storage and net computing service, with all computing resources visualized as services and delivered over the Internet (Zhao et al., 2011, Zhang et al., 2012). The cloud enhances collaboration, agility, scalability, availability, ability to adapt to fluctuations according to demand, accelerate development work, and provides potential for cost reduction through optimized and efficient computing (Marinos et al., 2011). The importance of Cloud Computing is increasing and it is receiving a growing attention in the scientific and industrial communities. A study by Gartner (2011) considered Cloud Computing as the first among the top 10 most important technologies and with a better prospect in successive years by companies and organizations. Cloud Computing enables ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of the Study
Several trends are opening up the era of Cloud Computing, which is an Internet-based development and use of computer technology. The ever cheaper and more powerful processors, together with the software as a service (SaaS) computing architecture, are transforming data centers into pools of computing service on a huge scale. The increasing network bandwidth and reliable yet flexible network connections make it even possible that users can now subscribe high quality services from data and software that reside solely on remote data centers.
Moving data into the cloud offers great convenience to users since they don’t have to care about the complexities of direct hardware management. The pioneer of Cloud Computing vendors, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) are both well known examples. While these internet-based online services do provide huge amounts of storage space and customizable computing resources, this computing platform shift, however, is eliminating the responsibility of local machines for data maintenance at the same time. As a result, users are at the mercy of their cloud service providers for the availability and integrity of their data.
Recent downtime of Amazon’s S3 is such an example. From the perspective of data security, which has always been an important aspect of quality of service, Cloud Computing inevitably poses new challenging security threats for number of reasons. Firstly, traditional cryptographic primitives for the purpose of data security protection cannot be directly adopted due to the users’ loss control of data under Cloud Computing. Therefore, verification of correct data storage in the cloud must be conducted without explicit knowledge of the whole data. Considering various kinds of data for each user stored in the cloud and the demand of long term continuous assurance of their data safety, the problem of verifying correctness of data storage in the cloud becomes even more challenging. Secondly, Cloud Computing is not just a third party data warehouse. The data stored in the cloud may be frequently updated by the users, including insertion, deletion, modification, appending, reordering, etc. To ensure storage correctness under dynamic data update is hence of paramount importance. However, this dynamic feature also makes traditional integrity insurance techniques futile and entails new solutions. Last but not the least, the deployment of Cloud Computing is powered by data centers running in a simultaneous, cooperated and distributed manner. Individual user’s data is redundantly stored in multiple physical locations to further reduce the data integrity threats. Therefore, distributed protocols for storage correctness assurance will be of most importance in achieving a robust and secure cloud data storage system in the real world. However, such important area remains to be fully explored in the literature.
In the past, security was simply a matter of locking the door or storing files in a locked filing cabinet or safe. Today, paper is no longer the only medium of choice for housing information. Files are stored in computer databases as well as file cabinets. Hard drives and floppy disks hold many of our secret information. In the physical world, security is a fairly simple concept. If the locks on your house’s doors and windows are so strong that a thief cannot break in to steal your belongings, the house is secure. For further protection against intruders breaking through the locks, you might have security alarms. Similarly, if someone tries to fraudulently withdraw money from your bank account but the teller asks for identification and does not trust the thief’s story, your money is secure. When you sign a contract with another person, the signatures are the legal driving force that impels both parties to honor their word.
In the digital world, security works in a similar way. One concept is privacy, meaning that no one can break into files to read your sensitive data (such as medical records) or steal money (by, for example, obtaining credit card numbers or online brokerage accounts information). Privacy is the lock on the door. Another concept, data integrity, refers to a mechanism that tells us when something has been altered. That’s the alarm. By applying the practice of authentication, we can verify identities. That’s comparable to the ID required to withdraw money from a bank account (or conduct a transaction with an online broker). And finally, non repudiation is a legal driving force that impels people to honor their word.
As the Internet becomes a more pervasive part of daily life, the need for e-security becomes even more critical. Any organization engaged in online activity must assess and manage the e-security risks associated with this activity. Effective use of cryptographic techniques is at the core of many of these risk-management strategies. The most important security tool is cryptography.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
Investigation revealed that cloud computing has become a social phenomenon used by most people every day. As with every important social phenomenon there are issues that limit its widespread adoption. Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else (the cloud provider). This happens when the owner of the remote servers is a person or organization other than the user; as their interests may point in different directions (for example, the user may wish that his or her information is kept private, but the owner of the remote servers may want to take advantage of it for their own business).
1.4 Aim and objective of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement a Computer Cloud Security System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives of study were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will;
- Enable any user before sending data to the cloud be encrypted with security key.
- Device a means of sharing data in a more secure and reliable manner over the cloud system.
- Create the awareness of the security threats in cloud computer to the people so as the alert them on how to secure their information.
- Enhance the integrity of data and improve the computer data security through encryption of data.
- Facilitate the use of more sophisticated tool against hacking, cracking, bugging of a system.
1.6 Significance of the Study
The proposed system will enlighten the people, the users of cloud computer on the security challenges and how to resolve these issues. Enhance the use and the effectiveness of the cloud computing among the people. Remove the fear of using cloud computing from the people since the research will come up with a new design that will solve the issue of privacy and third party.
One of the most important tools for protecting your data from an authorized access is Data Encryption, any of various methods that are used to turn readable files into gibberish. Even if an attacker obtains the contents of the file, it is gibberish. It does not matter whether or not the operating system protections worked.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The scope of study focuses on Computer Cloud Security System using data encryption, decryption and key hash algorithm in a multimedia data system.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research Material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent Power Failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Based on this research work, the following terms are used, and briefly defined bellow;
Encryption: A process of converting data/information into another form.
Decryption: A process of converting data/information (multimedia) back to its Original form.
Clear-text/plaintext: Original data/information before it is enciphered / scrambled.
Ciphered text/cryptogram: Information (multimedia) that has been converted into other symbols or form.
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