Exploring cyber security challenges of multi-cloud environments in the public sector

As the Public sector has begun to mature in the adoption of Cloud technology, the sector itself faces challenges in bringing together the disparate use of several different public cloud offerings across their individual organisations and reconciling the security challenges of people and technology to meet compliance and effectiveness. The aim of this research is to provide an overview of some of the challenges of cyber security across culture and technology in multi-cloud environments. Through a review of current research, industry papers and government frameworks this paper provides a comparative analysis that has been developed resulting in key areas for future research. This review found that in the people domain, the lack of availability of subject matter expertise to implement security education is a factor for the success of security in organisations as well as security awareness training and informed situational awareness. For Technology, it was highlighted that data accountability and integrity is a significant challenge in multi-cloud with limitations being restricted to the tier 1 Cloud Service Providers and a need for consistent benchmarking or framework across private industry and public sector alike. The results of this have assisted with articulating emphasised areas for improvement and further research for cyber security culture frameworks and benchmarking for confidentiality, integrity, and availability of public cloud.