Study on User Authority Management for Safe Data Protection in Cloud Computing Environments

Abstract

In cloud computing environments, user data are encrypted using numerous distributed servers before storing such data. Global Internet service companies, such as Google and Yahoo, recognized the importance of Internet service platforms and conducted self-research and development to create and utilize large cluster-based cloud computing platform technology based on low-priced commercial nodes. As diverse data services become possible in distributed computing environments, high-capacity distributed management is emerging as a major issue. Meanwhile, because of the diverse forms of using high-capacity data, security vulnerability and privacy invasion by malicious attackers or internal users can occur. As such, when various sensitive data are stored in cloud servers and used from there, the problem of data spill might occur because of external attackers or the poor management of internal users. Data can be managed through encryption to prevent such problems. However, existing simple encryption methods involve problems associated with the management of access to data stored in cloud environments. Therefore, in the present paper, a technique for data access management by user authority, based on Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) and secret distribution techniques, is proposed.