Strategies for Reducing the Risk of Data Breach Within the Internet Cloud

Businesses are increasingly incorporating cloud computing into their current business models. With this increase, security breach exposure has also increased, causing business leaders to be concerned with financial hardship, operational disruption, customer turnover, and customer confidence loss due to personal data exposure. Grounded in the integrated system theory of information security management, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore successful strategies some information security leaders in the aerospace and defense contractor industry use to protect cloud-based data from security breaches. The participants were 7 information security leaders from 7 different aerospace and defense contractor companies located in the United States mid-Atlantic region. Data from semistructured interviews were analyzed and compared with 8 publicly available data sources for data triangulation. Emergent themes narrowing this knowledge gap was extracted through an analysis technique such as coding and then triangulated. The recurring themes were (a) strong authentication methods, (b) encryption, and (c) personnel training and awareness. A key recommendation includes information security leaders implementing preventative security measures while improving an organization\u27s ability to protect data lost within the Internet cloud. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase consumers confidence while protecting confidential consumer data and organizational resources, protecting customers from the costs, lost time, and recovery efforts associated with identity theft