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AnonNews.org. To put that into perspective, there are about APIs, denial of service attacks, malicious insiders, abuse of
315 million people currently living in the United States. This cloud services, insufficient due diligence, and shared tech-
qualifies as one of the largest data breaches in U.S. history. nology vulnerabilities. 11
Shifting to cloud-based services may make busi- Consider each of these threats carefully. Cloud-based
ness sense. It may even be necessary in some businesses. services bring a unique set of problems with them that
Admittedly, the list of benefits from using cloud-based ser- may not be immediately apparent. Some of these prob-
vices is long. But it’s wise to contemplate potential costs of lems may be security issues. Others may include dissatisfied
cloud-based solutions as well. customers, the need to hire additional technical person-
The Cloud Security Alliance lists nine threats you nel, changes in internal processes, and upgrades to existing
should think about when considering a cloud-based solu- infrastructure.
tion of any type. These include data breaches, data loss, Not all clouds are puffy white pillows; some are dark
account or service traffic hijacking, insecure interfaces and stormy cyclones.

DisCussion Questions

1. List some of the benefits you see from corporations offer- 5. How would a network outage affect users of cloud-based
ing cloud-based services to their customers. services? Would network outages also affect corpora-
2. List some of the costs you see from corporations offering tions? How?
cloud-based services to their customers. 6. How could a denial of service (DOS) attack be used to
3. Name one cloud-based service you use (e.g., email, so- harm a corporation providing a cloud-based service?
cial media, etc.). If this service was involved in a data Could this be done from another country?
breach, what data would you lose?
4. Why would cloud-based service providers be an attrac-
tive target for attackers?

11
Cloud Security Alliance, “The Notorious Nine: Cloud Computing Top Threats in 2013,” 2013, accessed May 8, 2014, https://downloads
.cloudsecurityalliance.org/initiatives/top_threats/The_Notorious_Nine_Cloud_Computing_Top_Threats_in_2013.pdf.
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