Cyber-Attack, Intellectual Property Theft, and Organizations' Continuance Intention to Use Cloud Computing: A Quantitative Correlational Stud

This research was conducted to examine the extent to which security threats such as cyber-attacks and intellectual property theft are related to an organization's continuance intention to use cloud computing. A nonexperimental, correlational research design was used to measure the relationships between cyber-attacks, intellectual property theft, and an organization's continuance intention to use cloud computing. Survey data were collected from 169 IT managers and supervisors in companies that were using cloud computing technologies at the time of the study. Data were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression analyses. Results of the data analysis indicated that a statistically significant relationship existed between cyber-attacks, intellectual property theft, and an organization's continuance intention to use cloud computing. A significant negative relationship was found between the occurrence of cyber-attack and an organization's continuance intention to use cloud computing. Results also show a significant negative relationship between the occurrence of intellectual property theft and an organization's continuance intention to use cloud computing. The findings of this study will assist IT decision makers, cloud vendors, security experts, and organizations using cloud computing to better understand the impacts of security vulnerabilities and threats and also foster collaborations among these stakeholders leading to cloud security strategy formulation to reduce risks from cyber-attacks and intellectual property theft.