bstract-This research investigates

bstract-This research investigates the privacy,
confidentiality and integrity of data over the Cloud. It explores
different data security concerns over the Cloud as perceived by
experts and university students. This topic is significant
because of the increasing demand for Cloud services that
attracts many people to use it more frequently. Being aware of
data security concerns will undoubtedly help users take
precautions from unauthorized access up to data theft. The
comparison between the views of experts and users of data
threats over the Cloud encourages investigators to conduct
further research to increase awareness and maximize security
measures. This study is based on the assumption that data over
the Cloud are secure.
This paper reviews the literature that focuses on the experts'
findings and interpretations of data security issues and threats
over the Cloud. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) [I] points
out seven security threats: abuse and nefarious use of Cloud
Computing, insecure Application Programming Interfaces
(APIs), malicious insiders, shared technology vulnerabilities,
data loss or leakage, account or service hijacking, and
unknown risk profile. In addition, experts state different
attacks that may occur at any time: DoS attacks, Cloud
malware injection, side channels attack, authentication attacks,
and Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) cryptographic attack. In this
study, completed questionnaires were collected from students
of the University of the West of England to examine their
perception and awareness of data threats over the Cloud. Both
perceptions from experts and students were compared and
analyzed to derive conclusions about data security over the
Cloud.
A number of findings are discovered. As experts prove that
data might be compromised over the Cloud, the outcome of
this research reveals that users are unaware of these threats.
Many users are unaware of the issues they face concerning
their data's privacy, confidentiality, and integrity. However,
the participants value their data privacy. The results also show
that they utilize the Cloud for different purposes and various
benefits. As for further research, many ideas are proposed
with regard to research settings in terms of size of sample, type
and background of population, and the choice of qualitative
methodology.