Cloud Computing: benefits, risks and risk prevention

Cloud computing is an infrastructure that allows companies to rent any type of computing resources, such as network capacity and processing power, according to their current needs. Rather than a new technology, cloud computing is a new way of delivering computing resources. Despite the advantages that this infrastructure brings, it still poses many threats in several areas. In Sweden alone one third of all companies, in both the private and the public sectors, use cloud services. A bigger number of companies could use the cloud and this study's purpose is to make them aware by identifying its possible risks and the precautions that can be taken to prevent them. These precautions have been summarized in a list that can be used as a guideline by the companies that want to "enter the cloud". In the literature review of this paper we highlight for example the different types of cloud services, risks that have to do with information security, laws and contracts between suppliers and customers. To support the literature we conducted four qualitative interviews with four different companies of different sizes: one of them is a provider while the other three are customers of cloud services. In the study we come to the conclusion that, even though outsourcing the cloud (public) is the solution that involves the smallest amount of effort from the customer company in terms of risk management (because the latter is outsourced), the cloud customer needs to pay particular attention to the formulation of the contract. The cloud customer needs to be aware of the possible risks anyway and to ensure that the provider defines in the contract what precautions they will take against them. (Less)