Security-Enable Technology Acceptance Model (STAM): Business Security Concerns in the Adoption of Virtual Storage

Cloud computing has become a popular choice as an alternative to investing in new IT (Information Technology) systems. Cloud-storage has become one of the fastest growing services in the cloud; everyday more companies shift their data to virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third-parties. The popularity of virtual storage relies on some known advantage such as low deployment and maintenance cost, massive scalability, and reliability. However, when making decisions on adopting cloud-based solutions, security has always been a major concern. Efforts on characterizing information security issues in the cloud already exist, but there is currently no standard theoretical model that address specifically issues on privacy and security, concerning the adoption of virtual storage. This research proposes a security-enabled model which is built into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Our theoretically grounded model allows the identification of variables that are external to the IT manager’s cognitive concerns. These concerns include the constructs of attitude, behavioral intention, and actual use.  In addition, we  propose to study variables that are external to the cognitive constructs of perceived confidentiality, perceived risk, perceived security, we introduced these constructs along with the existing TAM. The proposed model provide different security related features to address different requirements and scenarios and can serve as reference model for the adoption  of cloud-storage based technologies in enterprises. We are currently working on a pilot experimental study in industries for further research on the impact of our model on the adoption of cloud-storage technologies in a security-enabled environment.