There are many storage solutions that cloud services use to support their customers. Understanding the available storage solutions is important so that you can apply the appropriate security controls to the cloud service:

• IaaS: In this model, your service provider will be provisioning storage resources that support your overall cloud infrastructure. Storage resources will be allocated to virtualized hosts and, in most cases, presented to operating systems as file systems. IaaS storage types include:
  • Object storage: API or web-based file storage. Examples include Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure.
  • Volume storage: Acts physical hard drives and will attach to virtualization host software such as VMware or Linux kernel-based virtual machines.

• PaaS: In this model, the service provider provisions all aspects of the underlying infrastructure and exposes APIs that allow a developer to store data on the storage that has been provisioned by the cloud services provider. PaaS storage types include:
  • Structured data storage: Highly organized and searchable data.
  • Unstructured data storage: This data is not organized and does not lend itself well to a structured storage approach. Unstructured data includes text files, videos, and so on.
• SaaS: In this model, the cloud service provider configures the web-based application and the cloud storage as a single offering. The management of cloud storage will typically be through an administrative component of the web application.