Analysis on cloud-based security vulnerability assessment

Abstract

Cloud computing delivery model can significantly reduce enterprise IT costs and complexities. This technology can handle the rapidly gowning environment and provide more flexible resources sharing and hence it has become as a new information technology infrastructure recently. In contrast to traditional enterprise IT solution, cloud computing moves the application software and databases to the servers in large datacenters which raise many security challenges. The business model now allows the users to purchase the capacity they require when they require it. The providers can maximize the utilization by multiplexing customer virtual machines (VMs) across a shared physical infrastructure. In the shared cloud environment, it would be possible to launch an attack cross VMs. How to define the policies for individual virtual firewall becomes more important. In this paper, we investigate the different security vulnerability assessments among the cloud environments. Experiment shows there are more vulnerability happened if vulnerability tools and the servers are in the same LAN. In other word, the hackers can find an easier way to get the target information if sit on the same LAN. This experimental result can be used to analysis the risk in third party compute clouds. © 2010 IEEE.