Cloud Computing Security Issues and Challenges

In the last few years, cloud computing has grown from being a promising business concept to one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. Now, recession-hit companies are increasingly realizing that simply by tapping into the cloud they can gain fast access to best-of-breed business applications or drastically boost their infrastructure resources, all at negligible cost. But as more and more information on individuals and companies is placed in the cloud, concerns are beginning to grow about just how safe an environment it is. This paper discusses security issues, requirements and challenges that cloud service providers (CSP) face during cloud engineering. Recommended security standards and management models to address these are suggested for technical and business community.