ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 439 6 SSC components and their vulnerabilities Network infrastructure The network infrastructure of SSC should ensure the safety and reliability of communication, including various network forms (e.g. cellular network, Internet, satellite network, government and enterprise intranets, among others). The vulnerabilities of these networks will be inherited by the network infrastructure of SSC and possibly amplified, given the additional complexity of the SSC architecture. Vulnerabilities of the network infrastructure in SSC may be present in the following areas: There is wide variety of devices involved in a SSC network. A peak of network accesses in a short time might lead to network congestion, a situation favorable to potential attackers. In these cases, authentication and key generation mechanisms can produce further network resource consumption. Internet or next‐generation Internet will be the core carrier of network infrastructure of SSC. Denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks across the Internet still exist, hence the need to adopt more robust preventive measures and disaster recovery mechanisms, also taking into account the heterogeneity of technical equipment and their protection capabilities. The heterogeneity of the network architectures will produce additional vulnerabilities, particularly in network authentication. The separation of sensor networks and communication networks will create new security risks. Theft, tampering, counterfeiting information, can disrupt the communication between different types of the network. Cloud computing facilities Due to the high concentration of users and information resources, the security consequences of cloud delivery are much higher than traditional delivery models. The security issues faced by cloud computing technology are as follows: Data concentration security issues o Cloud computing systems will affect the storage, processing and transmission of user data. If the privacy information is lost or stolen, the user could be seriously impacted. Cloud computing has introduced new types of security challenges, such as how to ensure the security of cloud service management and access control mechanisms inside the security provider, how to implement effective security audits, security monitoring for data manipulation, as well as how to avoid the potential risk of multi‐user coexistence in a cloud computing environment. Data availability in the cloud o User data and business applications are hosted in the cloud computing system. Therefore, business processes are dependent on the service provider's general reliability, in terms of service continuity, service level agreement (SLA) and security policies, as well as user data protection and recovery in case of an incident. Internet of Things IoT describes the capability of devices, provided with embedded sensors, to be connected via an IP address to the Internet, and exchange data with a remote system.