Comprehensive Data Life Cycle Security in Cloud Computing: Current Mastery and Major Challenges

One of the gravest concerns related to cloud computing pertains to data security. As businesses start on digital transformation, there is a clear requirement for privacy and data protection. Organizations today have more data, applications, and websites than they have ever had before. Data security has risen to the top of the priority list for cloud computing security. Although numerous solutions have been put forward, most of them exclusively target individual stages within the data life cycle, such as storage. This approach proves inadequate in effectively tackling the security challenges of cloud data, given that threats can arise at any phase of the data life cycle. Any security breach occurring during any stage of the data life cycle process has the potential to compromise overall data security. Hence, it becomes imperative to address data security across all phases of the data life cycle. This article’s primary contribution lies in introducing a novel viewpoint concerning data security solutions aligned with the data life cycle. This perspective holds significant importance and can serve as a road map for crafting a comprehensive security strategy. The article conducts an exhaustive review of the complete data life cycle and identifies a research gap comprising unresolved challenges that could potentially serve as research inquiries for our forthcoming endeavors.