Like most business owners and individual consumers, many small and midsized businesses still undecided on migrating sensitive data or classified information from in-house servers to the cloud due to their lack of trust in the existing information security strategy adopted by cloud service providers (CSPs). The concerns among prospective cloud consumers include risk of unauthorised data access, network traffic and/or account hijacking, data losses, data privacy, dependability and availability, CSP’s stability ratings, etc. pose a reasonable concern for the customers on the path to cloud deployment. In preparation for the next wave of cloud adoption which leverages on the enormous business and security benefits of cloud computing, this paper re-assesses these security issues and associated risks to cloud computing adoption. The paper adopted a quantitative approach that surveys the mindset of key IT Professionals in the Nigerian computing ecosystem. The survey was aimed at identifying and ranking the various security and forensic issues plaguing fears to the full cloud adoption and deployment. Following the findings, this paper prescribes the adoption of a mutually-beneficial strategy by CSPs which include incorporating hybrid cloud services with advanced threat computing model. This model is considered relevant across all virtualized environments. Going forward, this paper advocates the need for customer-centric implementation of all cloud security and forensic strategies which would ensure users exercise control over their data at rest or in transit within the network.
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Authors: Paschal Uchenna Chinedu, Wilson Nwankwo, Daniel Aliu, Saliu Mohammed Shaba, Muyideen Omuya Momoh
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