Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises’ Understanding of Security Evaluation of Cloud-Based Business Intelligence Systems and Its Challenges

Abstract

Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are encouraged to seek new business opportunities by adopting and utilising cloud-based services, their understanding of threats, vulnerabilities and risk evaluation in the cloud environment, which is crucial in the success of cloud-based business intelligence (BI) adoption, is hardly known. The purpose of this study was to investigate SMEs’ understanding of security evaluation of cloud-based BI and associated challenges. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 109 SME owners/managers from selected South African provinces in which data was collected by means of an electronic and postal questionnaire. The study found that SME owners/managers were aware of conventional security challenges in the cloud-based services including BIs, had a basic understanding of security evaluation in general, understood the need to evaluate cloud-based BIs in terms of physically checking for vulnerabilities and data security and were not proficient in performing security evaluations of cloud-based BIs and relied on experts. SMEs face predicaments in evaluating cloud-based BI due to a lack of appropriate tools they can use. The study concluded that SME owners/managers have a basic understanding of security evaluation and challenges it poses.