An Approach to Data Confidentiality Protection in Cloud Environments

In current cloud computing systems, because users’ data is stored and processed by computing systems managed and operated by various service providers, users are concerned with the risks of unauthorized usage of their sensitive data by various entities, including service providers. The current cloud computing systems protect users’ data confidentiality from all entities, except service providers. In this paper, an approach is presented for improving the protection of users’ data confidentiality in cloud computing systems from all entities, including service providers. The authors’ approach has the following features: (1) separation of cloud application providers, data processing service providers and data storage providers, (2) anonymization of users’ identities, (3) grouping cloud application components and distributing their execution to distinct cloud infrastructures of data processing service providers, and (4) use of data obfuscation and cryptography for protecting the sensitive data from unauthorized access by all entities, including service providers. The proposed approach ensures that users’ sensitive data can be protected from their service providers even if the users do not have full cooperation from their service providers.