Legal requirements and identifying data security for cloud service

Abstract

The implementation of cloud computing embraces remarkable potential for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as it permits them to reduce the costs as well as improve scalability and flexibility. In order to choose a suitable cloud service, it is essential to carefully classify non-functional and functional requirements. In this regard, the features affecting legal requirements as well as IT security are significant areas to the users of SMEs. However, the smaller the enterprise, the lower the possibility that there is enough expertise to categorize the requirements in these subject areas. Addressing this issue, the influence of this paper is the depiction of a method for finding IT security and legal requirements regarding a cloud service in an organized kind of way. The existing method was implemented as a part of a model for a cloud service search. According to this search system, an evaluation with users of SMEs was conducted. The evaluation results demonstrate the search system and its underlying technique to successfully assist the users regarding the identification of appropriate legal and IT security requirements, hence dropping the amount of knowledge required by users of SMEs, as well as the connected effort of penetrating for appropriate cloud services.