  Cloud Computing holds the potential to eliminate the requirements for setting
up of high-cost computing infrastructure for the IT-based solutions and
services that the industry uses. It promises to provide a flexible IT
architecture, accessible through internet for lightweight portable devices.
This would allow many-fold increase in the capacity or capabilities of the
existing and new software. In a cloud computing environment, the entire data
reside over a set of networked resources, enabling the data to be accessed
through virtual machines. Since these data centers may lie in any corner of the
world beyond the reach and control of users, there are multifarious security
and privacy challenges that need to be understood and taken care of. Also, one
can never deny the possibility of a server breakdown that has been witnessed,
rather quite often in the recent times. There are various issues that need to
be dealt with respect to security and privacy in a cloud computing scenario.
This extensive survey paper aims to elaborate and analyze the numerous
unresolved issues threatening the Cloud computing adoption and diffusion
affecting the various stake-holders linked to it.
