Cloud computing is a large and distributed platform repository of user information. But it also extensively serves the security threats in the research aspect. This chapter attempts to find the solution to the security challenges through the MapReduce technique in a forensic way. Four security challenges are included in this chapter: losing the user information during the mapping process for different reasons such as the shutdown of the server, which causes parallel or unrelated services to get interrupted; the velocity of attack, which enables security threats to amplify and spread quickly in the cloud; injecting malicious code; and finally information deletion. MapReduce and dynamic decomposition-based distributed algorithm with the help of Hadoop and JavaBeans in the live forensic method is used to find solution to the problem. MapReduce is a software framework and live forensics is the method attempting to discover, control, and eliminate threats in a live system environment. This chapter uses Hadoop's cloud simulation techniques that can give a live result.
TopLiterature Survey
Some methods have been proposed in literature for handling security issues in organizations implementing cloud computing. (Yu,W., Xu,G., Chen,Z., & Moulema,P.,2013) discussed security issues, requirements and challenges that cloud service providers (CSP) need to address in cloud engineering: Security issues describe the problems encountered during implementation of cloud computing(CC). Security standards provide some security templates, which are mandatory for cloud service providers. The Open Visualization Format (OVF) is a standard for creating new business models that help the company to sell a product on premises, on demand, or in a hybrid deployment model. Security management models are designed based on the security standards and best practices.
(Wang,J., Crawl,D., Altintas,I., Tzoumas,K., & Markl,V.,2013) addressed countermeasures (anti-viruses, intrusion detection systems) developed to mitigate well-known security threats. The focus is mainly on anomaly-based approaches which are mostly suited for modern protection tools and not for intrusion detectors. The pattern-based changes (example: from thin client connected to the main frame or powerful workstations connecting to thin clients) are observed, which cause some simultaneous changes in work environment and new problems to security of CC.
(Mackey,G et al.,2008) mentioned CC’s features like reduced total cost of ownership, scalability and competitive differentiation. They claim CC also minimizes complexity and provides faster and easier acquisition of services to customers. Virtualization is the technique used to deal with quality of service (QOS). Usage of CC is considered to be unsafe in an organization. For dealing with this type of situation, they investigated a few major security issues with CC and also existing countermeasures to those security challenges. Advantages for implementing CC from a different point of view are also discussed. They also stated that some standards are required in CC for security.
(Rosen,J et al.,2013) dealt with the security risks faced in the CC. They provided empirical evidence on security risks and issues encountered during deployment of service delivery models in an organization. The service models are placed in cloud and the empirical validation was made in order to justify the safety of the environment. Security was the main issue while there were also complications with data protection and data privacy in a continuous manner that affected the market.