Abstract:

The cloud is a virtualized concentration of computing resources. A technology with tremendous momentum in terms of evolution and dissemination that’s changing the way we process and store data. This technology allows many types of services and is increasingly becoming the infrastructure that enables and supports the next innovations and technologies. Despite its vast and growing adoption due to its considerable benefits, the cloud also provides some challenges, mainly regarding data privacy and security. By reviewing literature about the cloud, we hope to be able to produce valid interpretations and relations between key concepts in order to better understand the end consumer. Specifically, the main objective is to identify and quantify the key perceptions, knowledge and/or beliefs that will influence the consumer’s level of concern regarding the misuse/protection of their data. In order to achieve this goal, aside from the mentioned review of literature, we will propose a number of hypothesis as well as a conceptual module. Because studies on the Portuguese end consumer are scarce or non-existent, we hope and expect to produce new and interesting knowledge for both academic and management fields.