Enterprise Cloud Adoption: Leveraging on the Business and Security Benefits

The impact of globalization coupled with the pressure t of the recent economic downturn have stirred increased customers outlook on availability, scalability and efficiency to enterprise information technology (IT) solutions. The increasing interest in cost-effective Information Technology deployment by leaders and organisations centre on how best cloud computing can contain these requirements to reduce or eliminate the huge capital outlay for infrastructure ownership, increase efficiency, ensure higher return on investment (ROI), dynamic provisioning and utility–like pay-as-use services. However, a number of these enterprises along with some information security professionals have expressed fear of the cloud, stating their unflinching consciousness on security, privacy and forensic issues associated with this new computing platform for the next generation of the Internet. As with any emerging technology, cloud computing offers a rare opportunity to rework security and IT controls for a better tomorrow. In an environment where security and privacy has become paramount to enterprise customers, risk of unauthorized access to information in the cloud poses a significant concern to cloud computing stakeholders. This paper defines clouds, describes cloud computing with the different models and characteristics. The paper focuses on unveiling the fear to cloud adoption due to numerous associated security, privacy and forensic concerns in the cloud while also examining both the business and security benefits of this emerging computing paradigm. Finally, as a move in the new direction, appropriate suggestions on measures on how to ameliorate the security issues have been prescribed.