Security Designs for the Cloud, IoT, and Social Networking

Dac-Nhuong Le, Chintan Bhatt, Mani Madhukar, Dac-Nhuong Le, Chintan Bhatt, Mani Madhukar

• Publisher: Wiley-Scrivener
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119593188
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Redes de computadoras

Security concerns around the rapid growth and variety of devices that are controlled and managed over the Internet is an immediate potential threat to all who own or use them. This book examines the issues surrounding these problems, vulnerabilities, what can be done to solve the problems, investigating the roots of the problems and how programming and attention to good security practice can combat the threats today that are a result of lax security processes on the Internet of Things, cloud computing and social media.

PART I
SECURITY DESIGNS FOR THE CLOUD NETWORK

CHAPTER 1
ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM FOR DATA SECURITY IN CLOUD COMPUTING

ANINDITA DESARKAR¹, AJANTA DAS²

¹Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

²Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, Kolkata, India

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract

Cloud computing is the concept of using a virtual pool of resources to provide users with solutions to various computing problems via the internet. IT services are provided on an on-demand basis, which are accessible from anywhere, anytime through authorized users. “Storage as a Service” is one of the major services for the end users where sensitive data is stored in the cloud. As a result, data vulnerability becomes a common phenomenon where exploitation occurs through the provider or unauthorized users. So, data protection is the heart of data security where encryption algorithms play a major role. The greater complexity of these algorithms makes it more secure and safe compared to the other techniques. This chapter presents a few of the well-known encryption-decryption-based algorithms which are aimed at protecting cloud stored data from unauthorized access.

Keywords: Cloud computing, encryption algorithm, data security

1.1 Introduction

Cloud computing, which is the next-generation paradigm in computation, delivers applications and resources on an on-demand basis via the internet as services [1]. It provides an environment of hardware and software resources over the network to satisfy user requirements.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [2], cloud computing allows ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Resources include computing applications, network resources, platforms, software services, virtual servers and computing infrastructure [3].

Computing and data storage are two basic functionalities provided by cloud computing. Cloud service consumers get the necessary access to their data and complete the computing job through the internet. They have no idea about the storage location of data and machine details which perform the computing task.

Data protection and security is the primary objective in data storage to gain the user’s trust and make the implementation successful. Hence, data security is a burning issue in this domain, as data is scattered throughout various machines located in various locations. This makes it more complicated compared to the traditional systems. Though data security is the major issue, it’s accompanied by several others like compliance, privacy, trust, and legal matters. Hence, adequate tools and techniques are required to be in place to make the cloud adoption initiative successful. In this chapter, various well-known techniques in cloud data security are reviewed for the purpose of achieving this goal.

Section 1.5.3 highlights existing research works in related areas. A brief overview of cloud computing is depicted in Section 1.5.4. Section 1.5.5 discusses various well-known techniques implemented in this domain. It discusses a few well-known algorithms from both domains — symmetric encryption and asymmetric encryption. Section 1.5.6 presents the comparison of these algorithms based on various parameters. Performance analysis of encryption algorithms in cloud is presented in Section 1.5.7. Section 1.5.8 contains the conclusions drawn on the basis of the above.

1.2 Related Work

Kartit et al. have reviewed the commonly used encryption algorithms for data security and proposed a simple, secure and privacy-preserving architecture for inter-cloud data sharing. This architecture is built on the concept of encryption and decryption algorithms, aimed at securing cloud data from unauthorized access [4]. A brief overview of various symmetric and asymmetric algorithms along with their comparison is presented by Bhardwaj et al. in their paper [5]. The research was enhanced by Iyer et al. [6], who have presented an algorithm which works towards providing a secure way to communicate and store data in cloud servers.

Conner et al. [7] have proposed an effective reputation management system with associated trust establishment by using multiple scoring functions and implemented the security service on a realistic application scenario in distributed environments. Friedman and West [8] and Ristenpart et al. [9] have presented several privacies as well as security issues that arise in a cloud computing framework. Yan et al. [10] described a nice scheme for handling data protection in terms of confidentiality by implementing amalgamation of identity management with hierarchical identity-based cryptography for distribution of the key as well as mutual authentication in the cloud infrastructure. The security and privacy of data stored in cloud is the challenging task. Encryption algorithms are used for data security. In each algorithm an encryption key is used that can only be accessed by the authorized user. Ukil et al. [11] proposed an architecture and security model towards better protection of confidentiality and privacy in a public cloud infrastructure which does not depend on the deployment of the cloud.

1.3 Cloud Computing - A Brief Overview

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of all the computing services which majorly includes servers, storage, databases, networking and software over the internet for providing resource flexibility and lowering operating cost of the users. Lower cost, speed, global scale, productivity, performance and security are the top benefits of adopting this new technique over the traditional one. It eliminates or reduces the capital expense of buying necessary hardware and software, which works towards overall cost reduction. As most of the services are provided on demand, a huge amount of computing services can be arranged within a few minutes. It is also location independent because everything is accessible online. Optimized performance is achieved as the data centers, responsible for providing secure services, are updated with the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. The following subsections describe its essential characteristics, various layers and commonly available deployment models [12].

1.3.1 Essential Characteristics

Cloud computing includes various unique characteristics, of which the following five are the primary ones.

• ■ On-Demand Self-Service: An end user can get the required services automatically without human interaction with each service provider.
• ■ Broad Network Access: Services are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms which encourage the use of heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms.
• ■ Resource Pooling: The provider’s computing resources are selected across the multiple consumers through a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer has no or little knowledge about the location of the resources. However, they may be able to ge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms
• Part I: Security Designs for the Cloud Network
• Part II: Security Designs for the Internet of Things and Social Networks
• Part III: Security Designs for Solutions and Applications
• End User License Agreement