Privacy Violation in the Cloud Computing Environment: Challenges and Coping Mechanisms

Abstract

Cloud computing is a fertile environment for both organizations and individual users. However, this makes it also a fertile environment for violating the privacy of individuals, hence the importance of drawing attention to the challenges and mechanisms of facing the risks of violating privacy in the cloud-computing environment.

This study aimed at shedding light on privacy data in cloud computing and the user's relationship with it, how that data can be managed, what are the most prominent threats it faces, and identifying the parties that threaten to expose the privacy of such data.

This research provides a clear overview of the most important mechanisms to face data privacy violation or theft in cloud computing. Among the results, the most important ones are that the cloud-computing environment is not a completely secure environment for data privacy, due to the nature of the technology's vulnerability in general to tampering and penetration. Moreover, there are some types of cloud computing based on purely security principles that can be applied in any cloud system such as Security as a Service (SECaaS) and Monitoring as a Service (MaaS).

These findings draw attention to future research on the importance of considering cloud computing technology adoption by large organizations that hold millions of sensitive data.

We hope that the results of the study would contribute not only to draw more attention to the importance of cloud computing but also to adopt more applications that contribute to raising the level of protection for organizations. Indeed, it is worth paying more attention to the development of the cognitive aspect of individuals to adopt awareness ideas that contribute to protecting their privacy on the Internet in general and in the cloud-computing environment in particular