Cloud Computing Threats, Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures: A State-of-the-Art

Cloud computing created a revolution in the way IT organizations and IT teams manage their internal digital resources and workloads. One major drawback or limitation of cloud computing, among others, is security. Cloud computing is plagued by a plethora of threats and vulnerabilities, with new ones being identified from time to time. Year-by-year, minor to significant security incidents are reported across the globe. To the best of knowledge, there is no research artifact in the recent past that covers the recent advancements in cloud computing security. To address this issue, this paper provides an analysis of the literature in the past few years related to cloud computing security. Taxonomy related to cloud computing threats and vulnerabilities is provided by extending threats proposed by Cloud Security Alliance, which can educate cloud users and guide cloud providers to strengthen or audit their security policies and practices. Finally, state-of-the-art countermeasures and solutions to safeguard the cloud against different threats are also provided.