Book excerpt: You may regard cloud computing as an ideal way for your company to control IT costs, but do you know how private and secure this service really is? Not many people do. With Cloud Security and Privacy, you'll learn what's at stake when you trust your data to the cloud, and what you can do to keep your virtual infrastructure and web applications secure. Ideal for IT staffers, information security and privacy practitioners, business managers, service providers, and investors alike, this book offers you sound advice from three well-known authorities in the tech security world. You'll learn detailed information on cloud computing security that-until now-has been sorely lacking. Review the current state of data security and storage in the cloud, including confidentiality, integrity, and availability Learn about the identity and access management (IAM) practice for authentication, authorization, and auditing of the users accessing cloud services Discover which security management frameworks and standards are relevant for the cloud Understand the privacy aspects you need to consider in the cloud, including how they compare with traditional computing models Learn the importance of audit and compliance functions within the cloud, and the various standards and frameworks to consider Examine security delivered as a service-a different facet of cloud security