Database security in the cloud Essay

This chapter is mainly concerned with providing the research methods and the tools that were used to get the views of the respondents. They contribute a lot in the conclusion of the research. The methods that were employed in this research include sampling, questionnaires, and online surveys. With Web 2. 0 being in full force today, there are more avenues that have made it possible to get views from clients. These avenues include web forums, blogs, and review sites like ZDNet, and ZNet sites. This was a good method that was of paramount importance in this research. Use of interview This method was also a vital component of my research as its combination with other methods like observations and other statistical techniques yields optimum results. I ensured that I maintained the balance of emphasis which kept on shifting with the frame of reference and objectives of this study. Interviews also proved highly flexible especially given the fact that I handled it with care and achieved a considerably liberal atmosphere since questions that were not easily grasped by interviewees were rephrased and/or repeated emphatically and explanations given where it proved necessary. The use of interviews helped me in the study of human behaviour during the process and helped me to secure very intimate and personal knowledge about my study. However, they had the following limitations: the use this tool proved to be time consuming as I had to conduct personal visits to the sample population severally due to some absentee interviewees which forced me to conduct several revisits and some appointments that I made sure to catch up to the required information (McEvoy, & Schulze, 2008). Records and documentations also helped me in analyzing the legal basis of businesses, their past, current and projected status as regards capital input and output enabling me to deduce the history of ideas, prime philosophies and scientific thoughts that come with the projections (McEvoy, & Schulze, 2008). Journals were also useful in my research as I got relevant information and used it for my analysis and compilations. Expressive Documents including personal letters; life or case histories in the form of diaries and accounts of small-group processes which created a solid background for sourcing information in this research. 4. 1. 2 Use of questionnaires I employed the use of close-ended questions where I provided the respondents with a variety of choices to pick from that reflected the trends and use of Information Technology and also open ended questions in which I gave the respondents room to formulate their own answers to my questions. Although its use proved to be cost effective, easy to analyze, familiar to most of the respondents and reduced biasness, their use has shown that they have low response rates which is a real curse to statistical analysis and can reduce the reliability of the results (Jha, Merzky, & Fox, 2008). But I ensured a well designated study approach to the use of questionnaires to produce consistent and high response rates. 4. 1. 3 Online surveys/use of the internet The Internet proved very interactive in providing me with relevant information besides being affordable to administer, easy to modify and gave instant results for the study. The tool also had an advantage of making it easy to automate data creation, manipulation and reporting and made it user friendly. Although the use of the internet was efficient, it still had weakness of difficulty in determining and controlling selection probabilities, which is a hindrance to quantitative analysis of data collected (McEvoy, & Schulze, 2008). 4. 2 Procedures The results were from 5 companies which have widely dealt with cloud computing and are concerned with the security of the databases stored in the clouds. These companies have their representatives and program officers who were very helpful in this research. This is because they are the leading in the development and development of cloud computing. Data was collected using SPSS program. The views from the employees of these companies were captured in a questionnaire which was sent online. They were asked how they perceive their achievement of the database security in cloud computing. They were then asked of their personal feel of the extent to which the war against attacks in the cloud has been achieved. In part 1, the respondents were told to give the things they feel are important when one is implementing cloud computing. They were told to give the issues they feel were paramount in implementing security in cloud computing environments. Participants were then asked a series of questions related to database security in cloud computing: the type of cloud computing they wish to implement (attribute vs. consensus), the type of information source (personal vs. impersonal), type of heuristics (independent self-related vs. interdependent self-related), decision speed, consideration set, product involvement, and product knowledge. In part 2, participants were asked a series of individual differences in their technologies they wished to b implemented. In part 3, participants were presented with demographic questions such as age, gender, nationality, race/ethnicity, and cultural identity. Once a participant finished the questionnaire, he/she was thanked and dismissed. McEvoy, G. , & Schulze, B. (2008). Using clouds to address grid limitations. In Workshop on Middleware for Grid Computing (article 11). Retrieved May 19, 2010, from ACM Digital Library database. Jha, S. , Merzky, A. , & Fox, G. (2008). Cloud computing and grid abstraction. Retrieved on May 17, 2010, from Open Grid Forum Web site: http://ogf. org/OGF_Special_Issue/cloud-grid-saga. pdf