A validation of security determinants model for cloud adoption in Saudi organisations’ context

Abstract

Governments across the world are starting to make a dynamic shift to cloud computing so as to increase efficiency. Although, the cloud technology brings various benefits for government organisations, including flexibility and low cost, adopting it with the existing system is not an easy task. In this regard, the most significant challenge to any government agency is security concern. Our previous study focused to identify security factors that influence decision of government organisations to adopt cloud. This research enhances the previous work by investigating on the impact of various independent security related factors on the adopted security taxonomy based on critical ratio, standard error and significance levels. Data was collected from IT and security experts in the government organisations of Saudi Arabia. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) tool was used in this research for data analysis. Critical ratio reveals the importance of Security Benefits, Risks and Awareness Taxonomies on cloud adoption. Also, most of the exogenous variables had strong and positive relationships with their fellow exogenous variables. In future, this taxonomy model can also be applied for studying the adoption of new IT innovations whose IT architecture is similar to that of the cloud.