Solutions to Mitigate Information Security Breaches and Protect Personally Identifiable Information in a Public-Sector Cloud Computing Environment

Information is a significant asset to organizations because more organizations are moving data and applications to the cloud, so it is critical to ensure the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) stored in the cloud. The specific research problem was that information technology project managers (ITPM) lack a unified approach to protecting PII stored on the cloud. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to understand how ITPMs may implement viable solutions to mitigate the frequent occurrences of information security breaches in a public cloud environment. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provided the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected from 33 ITPM, security subject matter experts using an online survey. Three themes emerged from the thematic data analysis: (a) awareness of industry trends and security standards (b) viable security solutions related to strict user training, and (c) PII data protection and prevention. A crucial recommendation is for ITPM security subject matter experts to adequately educate their employees through frequent employee training methods on internal security issues and how to protect sensitive PII data when accessing the cloud from their internal organization. The implications for positive social change include the potential for ITPMs to initiate a demand for global awareness to increase stronger cloud security measures and help discover additional security methods to benefit customers and organizations in the future.