Secure Cloud Computing with Quality Assurance

In a world where every other business avenue is experiencing a change due to technological advancements, revolutionary ideas and a customer-centric approach, it has become incredibly important for business owners to evolve their strategies with the changing times. With faster results and access to information while sitting anywhere in the world becoming the new norm, all the credit has to go to cloud computing.

Cloud computing has been a game-changer across various industries in terms of providing a better user experience to all the customers. This has led not only led to a successful digital transformation but also has made the systems flexible and scalable and has reduced overall costs as well.

However, it comes with certain challenges and threats, particularly when we talk about data cloud storage. QA teams think of ways to integrate cloud computing in the software or working systems in a secure manner, without any loss of data. For this, experienced and skilled penetration testers come into the fore to ensure the security of data and the system in general.

Here, we take you through some of the common difficulties faced in data cloud storage and cloud computing and how QA and pen testers can save the day for you.

What are the difficulties faced in Data Cloud Storage?

Anonymity: While anonymity is one of the highlights of cloud computing, making the identity of the owner anonymous, it comes with certain vulnerabilities like the loopholes in the re-identification process.

Availability: The very concept of cloud service is to make data available to everyone in the cloud system whenever they want it from anywhere in the world. However, when it comes to a multi-tier system, it is not that easy as users can experience errors like DoS (Denial of Service) or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). As a result, cloud storage is not always available to all the users and furthermore, even a single malicious insider can make certain data unavailable for fellow users. To avoid this, there has to be an efficient QA and Testing team that ensures that such errors do not crop up every now and then.

Introduction of malware: Hackers or cyber-attackers can inject dangerous malware and worms into a system that has the capability of compromising the whole system. In the world of cyber-security, they are called ‘Botnets’ and are released into a cloud system to rig or destroy certain functions to downgrade the efficiency of the software.

Issues related to cryptography: As you must know, cryptography plays a huge role in tackling security issues in cloud computing. However, due to high numbers of RSA and faulty implementation, a brute force attack on data is plausible, thus compromising the system. Poor key management, verifiable data and computation efficiency are some of the other common problems faced in cloud computing due to cryptography.

Leakage of data: A breach in SLA (Service Level Agreements) Policy takes place when there is leakage of data. This usually happens when the disk drives without creating a backup as in such cases, there is a high chance of data breaches and data loss.

Hijacking of accounts: One of the common threats faced in cloud computing and data cloud storage is the loss of credentials. If the hackers have the credentials of user accounts, they can hijack the accounts and use them the way they want. They can further gain control of the accounts and lead users to inappropriate sites by attaching malware to certain function keys.

Inference: There are certain pieces of information in a cloud computing system that is not available to the general users, but certain malicious users can hack into the database and derive that sensitive piece of information. For this, one needs to be a high-level hacker with good knowledge about data mining techniques.

Issues related to Confidentiality: If security parameters are not predefined, security issues can arise easily. Data diddling attacks, social engineering attacks and session hijacking are some of the other attacks that can drop the integrity of the cloud computing system and affect the confidentiality of the data.

How can you mitigate the risks by using QA and Penetration Testing?

The best way to tackle the above mentioned threats and difficulties in cloud computing is by working with a team of highly-skilled team of QA and penetration testers. Following a three-tier approach can turn out to be the best bet in such cases.

Application Level: Due to security concerns, there is end-to-end visibility and control over data in the cloud computing system. All the business data is stored at the SaaS (Software as a Service) provider data centre at the application level and malicious software can easily exploit the weak spots of such cloud computing systems. Therefore, the administrators must use their algorithms with strong security hosts.

Service Middleware Level: You need to include measures like protocol standard security, user authentication, service credibility, sniffing and spam snooping and so on to improve cloud security at the service middleware level.

Infrastructure Level: An efficient authentication process should be used at the infrastructure level to ensure the security of the system. Furthermore, there must be on-demand resource availability for Virtual Private Networks (VPN) at this level.

Thanks to cloud computing, companies now do not need to invest in new software infrastructures as it provides various IT solutions under one big umbrella. However, to ensure the security of the system, you need highly skilled QA and penetration testers. If you are looking for such professionals to develop a cloud computing system for your business, get in touch with TestUnity.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.