Abstract:
The cloud has become a common to-go-to place and the center of all business and technology enterprises. It is a service that provides scalable and virtualized data storage, virtual
machines, cloud application and more facilities to various companies. Internet reliability
and penetration have enhanced the expansion of cloud-based ventures. Information security
is the most challenging aspect of information processing. Organizations, governments, and
individuals are facing many information security risks. These risks can cause severe damages that might lead to significant financial losses, breach of the confidentiality of sensitive
information, or loss of integrity or availability of sensitive data. Like other industries, the
banking sector has continued to evaluate the impact and necessity of offering certain banking
services on the cloud over the last decade. Since banking deals with wealth, it carries massive
baggage of unique and sensitive features (including deposits and Lending of money) whereby
any changes to such features are viewed with utmost concern.

The Kingdom of Bahrain is well known for its banking sector, unlike the rest of the
Middle East countries renowned for their prowess in oil mining and exportation. The financial
industry in Bahrain is made up of many micro-sectors such as money changers, hedge funds,
brokers and retail, and wholesale banks. The banking sector stakeholders cannot turn a blind
eye towards the convenience of the new kid in the block, mobile banking. The Government
of Bahrain has also exerted enormous pressure on the banking industry to embrace a cloud-first approach. The thesis below explains the various risks involved in cloud computing to
establish a secure and trusted framework for strategic cloud migration in the Kingdom of
Bahrain.