The Cloud Security Alliance [CSA] has identified some security threats that are peculiar to the cloud computing environment. The following tasks require you to identify and make an analysis of some of them as well as provide solutions to the threats and scenarios so identified.

a. Provide a brief analysis of how security on the cloud is affected by the fact that cloud computing service providers are always competing for customers.

b. Assess the impact of malicious insiders to the cloud security paradigm.

c. Analyse the security issues surrounding the Infrastructure as a Service [IaaS] model and provide possible solutions as to how these issues may be hurdled.

d. Analyse the risk issues associated with using cloud infrastructure made available by a service provider whose risk profile is not well known or has not been verified. Formulate a possible strategy that can be used to mitigate this risk.