Threats and Vulnerabilities Affecting the Adoption of Cloud Computing in Iraq

Cloud computing offers many benefits including enhanced flexibility, disaster recovery, free capital expenditures, automatic software updates, sustainability, and work anytime, anywhere. In addition, many other features and services can be offered to customers. However, cloud computing still suffers many threats which may cause vulnerabilities. Therefore, today many organizations are still hesitant to adopt cloud computing because of fear for privacy of their data and confidentiality. Understanding and addressing security threats are a prerequisite for unleashing the huge potential of cloud computing. In this study, a survey is conducted on some cloud service providers and users to explore security threats and vulnerabilities in cloud computing experienced by many organizations in Iraq. Consequently, many countermeasures are proposed. Descriptive research methodology is adopted in this research. The results of the study showed that privacy, confidentiality, control of data are the main obstacle to cloud computing adoption.