Mpho Mohlameane¹ and Nkqubela Ruxwana², ¹The Da Vinci Institute, South Africa and ²Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa

Cloud computing promises good opportunities for economies around the world, as it can help reduce capital expenditure and administration costs, and improve resource utilization. However there are challenges regarding the adoption of cloud computing, key amongst those are security and privacy, reliability and liability, access and usage restriction. Some of these challenges lead to a need for cloud computing policy so that they can be addressed. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First is to discuss challenges that prompt a need for cloud computing policy. Secondly, is to look at South African ICT policies and regulatory laws in relation to the emergence of cloud computing. Since this is literature review paper, the data was collected mainly through literature reviews. The findings reveals that indeed cloud computing raises policy challenges that needs to be addressed by policy makers. A lack of policy that addresses cloud computing challenges can negatively have an impact on areas such as security and privacy, competition, intellectual property and liability, consumer protection, cross border and juridical challenges.

Cloud Computing, Policy, Law, Regulation.