Towards an Understanding of Cloud Computing Adoption in SMEs

Abstract

The advent of digital technologies such as cloud computing has provided enormous opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to digitalise their businesses. However, with increasing cloud computing adoption, the security and privacy threats to the SMEs are on the rise. By conducting an extensive review of literature, this paper examines and identifies the security factors that influence cloud computing adoption specifically by SMEs. The literature review focused on papers published in ten years related to the security requirements and associated cloud computing adoption factors by SMEs. The framework focused on understanding socio-technical factors that influence the intent to adopt cloud computing by SMEs. The findings attest to the impacts of key security and privacy-related factors (including cloud security standard, data privacy concerns, data security concerns, skilled personnel, technology readiness, perceived cloud security benefits, legal compliance and trust in cloud service providers) on SMEs' intent to adopt cloud computing.