Cloud Computing Security: Abuse and Nefarious Use of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an emerging and promising computing model that provides on-demand computing services which eliminates the need of bearing operational costs associated with deploying servers and software applications. As with any technology, cloud computing presents its adopters with security and privacy concerns that arise from exposing sensitive business information to unauthorized access. This paper will explore and investigate the scope and magnitude of one of the top cloud computing security threats “abuse and nefarious use of cloud computing” and present some of the attacks specific to this top threat as it represents a major barrier for decision makers to adopting cloud computing model. Also, this paper aims to serve as an introductory research effort to warrant more extensive research into this top threat and help researchers to make recommendations to business organizations as to whether or not their data are vulnerable to such threat when deciding to join the cloud.