Investigating Cloud Computing Security Threats with a View to Provide Countermeasures

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DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to my God, parents, and my friends. I could not have completed my journey without their love, support, and encouragement. Throughout my journey my parents have shown great support for me and they have always stood by me, and believed in me and my abilities, even at the times when I had given up hopes. I can indubitably say that the support and inspiration that these individuals have enabled me to attain this goal of completing my dissertation. In all things that I do, I consider the impact it will have on them, and I appreciate their support in doing the same. Throughout the process of this dissertation, I found out that it is the desire to become successful in life, which at the end of the day makes the journey worthwhile.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This journey has only been possible because of God and his promise to make the impossible possible. There have been many times throughout this journey that I often thought of giving up. My faith in God not only helped me during those doubtful moments but has taught me that through God nothing is beyond reach. God, your will is manifested through me.

I wish to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Dr. , chairperson, for this doctoral study. Words are inadequate to express how much I appreciate your patience, guidance, and effort to get me where I am today on the road to achieving my dream. Your determination to guide me through this doctoral study is my inspiration that has enabled me to complete the study.

I want to thank Dr. , committee member, for his outstanding and ongoing support during the development of this doctoral study. One of my goals during this doctoral journey is to produce a quality research or product.

My dream to contribute to my community and the world through research is within reach through the efforts of several educators, friends, and my family, who are supporting me. I do appreciate each and every person that is involved in this journey of mine.

ABSTRACT

Cloud computing has become increasingly popular because it offers users the illusion of having infinite computing resources, of which they can use as much as they need, without having to worry about how those resources are provided. It also provides greater scalability, availability, and reliability than users could achieve with their own resources. However, potential users would be wise to question whether the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of their data are not violated in cloud storage. This is not only due to the fact that research in cloud computing security is not mature, but also because negative experiences have shown that none of the large-scale storage services is completely reliable and any of them may lose or corrupt customer data. This dissertation focuses on improving data security for cloud storage from three different perspectives, namely, integrity, confidentiality, and availability. The main contribution to improve integrity is to address the ...