A Study into Privacy and Legal Issues in Cloud Computing: The Mozambican Context

During the last 10 years, Cloud computing has become an evolving technology providing several benefits such as cost reduction and high flexibility. However, one of the main challenges related to cloud computing is related to data security and privacy. Despite this, worldwide many countries, specially developed countries have adopted cloud computing technology. In Africa, specifically in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Mozambique is one the countries who has recently adopted cloud computing technology. However, on the contrary to countries such as Mauritius and South Africa, Mozambique still does not have a national strategy for cloud computing in place, including security and privacy issues. International organizations such as ENISA and NIST as well as ITU have published frameworks related to cloud computing adoption covering data security and privacy issues. Therefore, in this paper we first analyze the cloud computing frameworks published by these international organizations. In addition, the paper also analyses the adoption of cloud computing in developed and developing countries, such as USA, UK, Germany, Mauritius and South Africa. From these analyses, the paper presents some recommendations for Mozambique to adopt best practices and follow international frameworks related to cloud computing including data security and privacy.