A Survey of Cloud Computing and Social Networks <s> Architecture <s> With the increasingly ubiquitous nature of Social networks and Cloud computing, users are starting to explore new ways to interact with, and exploit these developing paradigms. Social networks are used to reflect real world relationships that allow users to share information and form connections between one another, essentially creating dynamic Virtual Organizations. We propose leveraging the pre-established trust formed through friend relationships within a Social network to form a dynamic“Social Cloud”, enabling friends to share resources within the context of a Social network. We believe that combining trust relationships with suitable incentive mechanisms (through financial payments or bartering) could provide much more sustainable resource sharing mechanisms. This paper outlines our vision of, and experiences with, creating a Social Storage Cloud, looking specifically at possible market mechanisms that could be used to create a dynamic Cloud infrastructure in a Social network environment. <s> BIB001 </s> A Survey of Cloud Computing and Social Networks <s> Architecture <s> Cloud computing has changed the whole picture that distributed computing used to present e.g. Grid computing, server client computing. Cloud has given a new meaning to distributed, and off-premises computing. Although, Cloud offers great benefits, it also introduces a myriad of security threats to the information and data which is now being ported from on-premises to off-premises. Where cloud computing can help organizations accomplish more by paying less (in the longer run) and breaking the physical boundaries between IT infrastructure and its users, due to openness of accessible information and data relying on trust between cloud provider and customer, heightened security threats must be overcome in order to benefit fully from this new computing exemplar. Breach in the security of any component in the cloud can be both disaster for the organization (the customer) and defacing for the provider. This paper explores the security issues related to the cloud. The paper also discusses the existing security approaches to secure the cloud infrastructure and applications and their drawbacks. Finally, we explore some key research challenges of implementing new cloud-aware security solutions that can provide the likes of pre-emptive protection for complex and ever dynamic Cloud infrastructure, followed by conclusion where we try to entail the whole research and try to formulate a security strategy which will enable the Cloud providers and customers alike to fight against ever emerging security threats. <s> BIB002 </s> A Survey of Cloud Computing and Social Networks <s> Architecture <s> Nowadays, ubiquitous sensor devices such as mobile phones, laptops, GPSes, etc. allow one to access not only his own data but also others' on cloud servers. To enhance security, data is usually encrypted before sending to the servers. However, making use of others' ones encrypted data without decryption keys is very challenging. In this paper, we suggest a framework that allows users of cloud-based social networks to share their private data in a secure manner. In our framework, every user in a group has his own secret key to encrypt and decrypt data. The key will be revoked if the user leaves the group. Using proxy re-encryption schemes, the framework helps any user be able to access others' data in the same group. <s> BIB003 </s> A Survey of Cloud Computing and Social Networks <s> Architecture <s> Two cutting edge technologies are cloud computing and social media. Healthcare is a promising application of these technologies. In this paper, we describe our design and prototype implementation of a social healthcare network over the cloud. The system is secured with a trust-aware role-based access control. Our work addresses an unmet need in social healthcare networking -- emotional support, and demonstrates social healthcare network application in a real cloud computing environment. <s> BIB004
The cloud architecture that is commonly used through social applications does not differ from the typical cloud architectures. PaaS is commonly used for social applications as a total solution for social app development. Social applications can be designed as applications on top of existing social networks or as separate applications. In the Social Cloud, the system consists of a Facebook application that is used to share the resources provided by the users. In this system, Facebook's built-in capabilities were leveraged with user management and authentication. The established relationships within the social network are used to map certain resources and services to particular users. For example, resource sharing can be done only with friends, or members of the same group. The application itself serves as the type of marketplace where the actual services or resources can be obtained. In their implementation, the resources were provided as storage as a service BIB001 . In social cloud for healthcare, an existing social network was not used. Instead the entire social cloud application was hosted on the CSP Amazon's EC2. The major components here were the social cloud, the access control and the database. Users access the social cloud through the access control, and data is persisted in the backend database BIB004 . In terms of architecture, once again close attention must be taken in regards to security of the cloud whether using either type of social application. Both between the user and the cloud service provider. Both entities need to be aware of the possible threats to security. These include both outside and inside threats. Since public clouds tend to have multiple users on the same system, it is important to ensure that there is proper authorization, authentication and access control to maintain each user's security on their cloud data and resources. This would require the cloud system to be secure from end to end, on the virtual environments, API calls, network communications and otherwise. These requirements are similar yet different from traditional information security due to the additional complexity and flexibility of the cloud. To ensure proper security, providers and users should also define policies and requirements before moving to a cloud solution especially due to the sensitive nature of personal data on the social network. This means that if a social application is sitting on top of an existing social network, special scrutiny should be given to the communication between the two BIB002 . In one framework for a secure social network on the cloud, the CSP is transparent to the users. A proxy sits between the cloud provider and the end user. Data is encrypted with a key from the key manager before being sent to the proxy and then decrypted once it reaches the user with a corresponding key BIB003 .