On the Relevance of Security Risks for Cloud Adoption in the Financial Industry Completed Research Paper

For financial institutions as "heavy users" of Information Technology (IT), the promises of cloud computing - most notably, increased flexibility and reduced provisioning cost - are tempting. However, moving data and applications from a confined internal IT infrastructure to an external, shared cloud poses multiple new security issues. This paper provides an assessment of the relevance of selected issues, based on interviews with 12 representatives of financial institutions. Our results indicate that despite technical advancement and legal arrangements, certain security issues are likely to remain important inhibitors for the adoption of cloud computing by financial institutions.