To get a web page from your cloud provider, you’ll likely be using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as the computing mechanism to transfer data between the cloud and your organization. HTTP is a stateless protocol. This is beneficial because hosts do not need to retain information about users between requests, but this forces web developers to use alternative methods for maintaining users’ states. For example, when a host needs to customize the content of a web site for a user, the web application must be written to track the user’s progress from page to page. The most common method for solving this problem is sending and receiving cookies.