Critical Analysis and Problem Definition Report on Research Methods in IT

This report provides a critical analysis of research methods in IT, specifically focusing on cloud storage, security, and multi-user environments. The report reviews two papers and discusses their contributions to the research community. The first paper, 'DeyPoS: Deduplicatable Dynamic Proof of Storage for Multi-User Environments,' proposes a scheme for maintaining cloud storage in multi-user environments. The second paper, 'A Secure and Dynamic Multi-Keyword Ranked Search Scheme over Encrypted Cloud Data,' proposes a secure and efficient multi-keyword ranked search over encrypted cloud data. The report also discusses the significance of the research and the research questions addressed by the papers.

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6112ICT RESEARCH METHODS IN IT
7113ICT RESEARCH FOR IT
PROFESSIONAL
Course Convenor : Professor
Kewen Wang Assignment 1:
Critical Analysis and Problem
Definition Report
Student Name:
Student Number:
School of Information and Communication
Technology Griffith University

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Part 1: Paper Reviews
Title of Paper 1
DeyPoS: Deduplicatable Dynamic
Proof of Storage for Multi-User
Environments
0.0.1 A. The context of the
paper
The paper “DeyPoS:
Deduplicatable Dynamic Proof of
Storage for Multi-User
Environments”by “Kun He, Jing
Chen, Ruiying Du, Qianhong Wu,
Guoliang Xue, and Xiang Zhang”is
associated with discussing about
the storage outsourcing which is
becoming more and more
attractive in the industry and well
as in the academic area because
of the advantages provided by it
such as the low cost, high
accessibility, along with easy
sharing.
0.0.2 B. The details of the
paper
Summary:
Research community
The paper addresses the research
community of the storage of files in the
cloud server or any kind of storage
outsourcing.
Sub group of the research
The major sub group in this community
is the industrial storage devices who
need to store huge amount of data in
their servers and ensure the security of
the data.
Key publication and related
journals
The name of the key researhcers in the
sub group is Amol C. Adamuthe.
The most important journals where the
sub group publishes is the
International Research Journal of
Engineering and Technology.
Rating of paper
The rating that could be provided to
the journal where the paper is
published is significantly high as it
provides the discussion about the
general requirement of the Dynamic
proof of storage and the discussion
about it that claims that it is the most
important cryptographic primitive that
allows the checking of the integrity of

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the outsourced files and for efficiently
update these files in the cloud server.
The author could be rated significantly
high as they have been able to provide
the concise and clear discussion of the
various aspects of the storage
outsourcing.
The institutions could be rated
significantly high as the authors
belonged to different institutes and
they provided this clear discussion
about the cryptography. Kun He is
PH.D student of the Wuhan University.
His research interests includes the
cryptography, mobile computing, cloud
computing, and network security. He
possess significant knowledge about
the various aspects of this technology.
Rest of them have acquired PH.D from
various universities and they possess
the required knowledge to evaluate
such critical topic and then provide the
recommendations as it is required.
The research question that has been
addressed by that “ Are there any
proper schemes for addressing the
security issues in the deployment of
the Dynamic PoS in the multi-user
environment?”
Was this theory stated?
The paper “DeyPoS: Deduplicatable
Dynamic Proof of Storage for Multi-
User Environments”by “Kun He, Jing
Chen, Ruiying Du, Qianhong Wu,
Guoliang Xue, and Xiang Zhang”is
associated with discussing about the
storage outsourcing which is becoming
more and more attractive in the
industry and well as in the academic
area because of the advantages
provided by it such as the low cost,
high accessibility, along with easy
sharing. The research is well justified
because it provides the large
organisations with multiuser storage
requirement to understand the various
security concerns and then make the
proper deployment decisions. This
research is immensely significant as it
would provide the organisations with
the multiuser requirements to store
and access the files that are
maintained in the cloud. The outcome
of the research which proved the fact
that the DeyPoS implementation is
significantly efficient and specifically
when there are large file size and

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number of challenged blocks.
The existing work in this sector is
based on the deployment of the cloud
storage on the single user environment
and this paper is based on deployment
of the cloud storage for the multi user
environment. There is clear discussion
of the existing research in this area.
There are numerous contributions to
this paper and this includes the best of
our knowledge which is the first work
related to the introduction of the
primitive known as the Deduplicatable
dynamic Proof of storage which is
associated with solving the diversity in
the diversity and the challenges related
to private tag generation as well.
Contrarily the existence of the
authenticated structure like the skip
list or the Merkle tree have contributed
towards the reduction of the cost
related to communication in the proof
of storage phase as well as in the
deduplication phase assisted by similar
type of computation cost. It is also to
be noted that the HAT is also capable
of supporting the verification of the
integrity along with supporting the
dynamic operations and the cross-user
duplication by having a good
consistency.
There are no clear research theory that
has been provided in this article as the
research theory that could be applied
is that the efficiency of the cloud
storage for the multiuser environment.
Research method considered:
The research method that has been
used in this article is the theoretical
review of the existing research articles.
So the proposed comprehensive
requirements in the multi-user cloud
storage systems along with the
introduction of the model of
deduplicatable dynamic PoS is one of
the best things which can be used.
Depending upon the HAT the paper has
also been associated with proposing
the first practical deduplication
dynamic PoS which is also known as
the DeyPoS and has been associated
with providing its security in the
random oracle model. Along with this
the theoretical and the experimental
results is associated with showing that
the DeyPoS implementation is very
much efficient specially when the file of
the size and the number of challenged

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blocks are becoming large.
The answers that the research
provides:
The cost is evaluated in the cost phase.
The initialisation time for the
construction of the Merkle tree and the
HAT has been discovered as 6.7s and
7.9s. When the size of the block has
been fixed at 4kB and number of
challenged blocks is 480, the cost of
the communication of the solution that
is based on the Merkle tree is almost
2MB even though the cost of the
DeyPoS is almost 104kB. When the
number of the challenged file blocks
have been fixed, the cost of effective
communication remains at the steady
level in the Merkle tree based schemes
as the major cost is applicable in the
transmission of the corresponding file
blocks. The authors proposed the
comprehensive requirements in the
multi-user systems of cloud storage
and then introduced the model of the
deduplicatable dynamic PsS. The initial
practical deduplicatable dynamic PoS
scheme has been proposed and then
the security has been proved in the
random oracle model. The
experimental and the theoretical
results displays the efficiency of the
DeyPoS implementation specifically
when there are large number of file
size and the challenged blocks.
This research is related to the other
researchers as this research provided
the large organisations with the
scheme for maintaining their cloud
storage.
Part 2: Developing research
questions from a problem emerging
in the literature:
Topic of research problem
Security in multiuser
environment deployment
Area of IT
The research problem
addresses the problems related
to the multiuser cloud storage
Research question
Is the security provided in the
multiuser environment of cloud
deployment adequate for the
organisations to store data?
Significance of the
problem

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The significance of security in
the cloud storage is significant
as it helps the organisations to
understand if it is beneficial for
the organisations to store in the
cloud. If the organisations are
aiming to deploy the data in the
multiuser cloud environment
then the security aspects of this
environment is required to be
considered and analysed
extensively.
Aim of research
This research aims to provide
the discussion of the security in
the multiuser environment of
cloud storage [3].
Research outcome
The outcome of the research is
the discussed and it would
provide the required discussion
about the security on the cloud
storage.
Title of Paper 2
A Secure and Dynamic Multi-
keyword Ranked Search Scheme
over Encrypted Cloud Data
0.0.3 A. The context of the paper
Name the research community
that the paper addresses.
Improvement of data retrieval
techniques from cloud especially when
data is encrypted.
Name the sub-group(s) in this
com-
munity within which the
research
can best be classified.
Improvement of encrypted data
processing in cloud framework
• Name one of the key
researchers in
this sub-group (apart from the
authors of your paper).
D. X. Song, D. Wagner, and A. Perrig
Name one of the most important
journals or conferences in which
this
sub-group publishes (apart from
the
place where your paper was
published).
IEEE explore
• How highly do you rate the

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conference/journal in which
the paper is published?
IEEE explore provides some of the
industry leading journals and
conference paper and it is
widely recognized worldwide
within the scientific community.
How highly do you rate the
author(s) of the paper?
The authors have completed several
international conference on this topic
and also published various journals in
various reputed and leading journals
including IEEE that is considered in
this context.
0.0.4 B. The details of the paper
Research question addressed:
 The research questions
addressed by the paper are
following:
 Why cloud computing becoming
so popular
 Is cloud computing really
effective and secure
 What are the possible methods
that should be considered for
improving cloud computing
security?
 What are the different
algorithms that increase cloud
computing security?
However if one needs to consider
whether those research questions were
clear or not, it should be noted that
they were not clearly stated which
makes it difficult to identify What were
they as those research question that
the paper has considered was not
explicitly stated. However a detailed
assessment of the paper does provide
some basic information of the research
questions considered by the authors.
Justification of the research:
In order to identify How well justified
is the research it is important to
consider the research findings of the
paper. The paper has been associated
with presenting the a multi-keyword
ranked secure search which would be
much more secure and would eb done
over the encrypted cloud data which
would be simultaneously associated
with supporting the dynamic update
operations such as the deletion and
insertion of any document. The paper
has also been associated with
combining the vector space model and
the widely used TF x IDF model with

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the index construction as well as with
the query generation.
Significance of the research:
The paper has been associated with
constructing a special tree-based index
structure along with proposing a
“Greedy Depth-first Search” algorithm
s as to provide the entire world with an
efficient multi keyword ranked search.
Besides this the secure kNN algorithm
has been utilized for the purpose of
encrypting the index and query vectors
along with ensuring the accurate
relevance of the score calculations that
is done between the encrypted index
and the query vector. Besides this for
the purpose of resisting the statistical
attacks the phantom terms are
generally added to the index vector for
blinding of the results obtained from
the search. Because of the usage of the
special tree-based index structure the
scheme which has been proposed is
capable of achieving the sub-liner
search time and for dealing with the
deletion and insertion of the
documents flexibility. The conducting
of the extensive experiments helps in
demonstrating of the efficiency that the
scheme is having.
The secure, efficient and the dynamic
research scheme which has been
proposed is not only associated with
supporting the accurate multi-keyword
ranked search but is also associated
with supporting the dynamic deletion
as well as the insertion of the
documents. Besides this the
construction of the special keyword
balance binary tree as the index along
with the proposing of a “Greedy Depth-
first Search” algorithm has been done
so as to obtain a better efficiency than
the linear search. Additionally the
parallel search process has been
carried out so as to further reduction
of the time cost. The security scheme is
generally protected against two threat
models and this has been done by
making use of the kNN algorithm. So it
can be stated that the entire results of
the experiment is associated with
demonstrating the efficiency of the
scheme which has been proposed.
Hence the research is significant and
the outcome of the research is also
worth discovering

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Connections with existing research:
There is a clear discussion of the
existing work in the research area. In
order to identify how this work
connects to the paper under review it
is important to note that the paper has
addressed some of the key issues that
the others researchers have not
identified and provided a basis of the
research for this paper. The authors
have identified papers that has
discussed techniques for searchable
encryption schemes and multi-keyword
based search algorithms which has
provided an important context for the
authors of this paper to extend this
idea of multi-keyword based algorithm
for retrieving cloud based encrypted
data. This reference to the existing
research findings has clearly
mentioned and described in the paper.
Theory of the research:
Was the research based on any
theory?
The research is based on the theory of
the unencrypted dynamic multi-
keyword ranked search (UDMRS)
scheme which is constructed with the
vector space model and KBB tree.
Based on the UDMRS scheme, two
secure search schemes (BDMRS and
EDMRS schemes) are constructed for
managing security threats.
Was this theory stated?
The theory for the research has been
properly stated and correctly explained
as well in this paper.
Research method considered:
The research method that was adopted
to conduct the research project is
quantative primary research method.
The rigour of the research design:
The research clearly address the
research problems that this report has
identified.
The answers that the research
provides:
The answer that the research provides
are techniques to improve data
retrieval technique from cloud based
encrypted data and how to improve
this process while maintaining proper
data security and data efficiency
required for extensive applications
which are designed on cloud platform.
These answers backed up with
sufficient evidence and the answer to

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this question that has too much been
claimed is that the paper has only
provided information that has only
based on proper research evidence and
research data.
Part 2: Developing
research questions
from a problem
emerging in the
literature:
The topic of the research
problem:
A Secure and Dynamic Multi-
keyword Ranked Search Scheme
over Encrypted Cloud Data
The area of IT:
Data encryption, data security and
data processing
Research question clearly stated:
 keyword-based information retrieval in
context of data retrieving from cloud is
effective but complex
 Advanced and special techniques
required for retrieving encrypted data
from cloud
 multi-keyword based search algorithm
needs to apply properly for retrieving
cloud based encrypted data
Significance of the problem:
If proper data access technique is not
available, it is not possible to retrieve
data from cloud, especially when it is
encrypted. However encryption is
necessary for data security in the
cloud and hence encryption has to be
considered for data security which
requires to develop an efficient data
retrieval technique to access cloud
based encrypted data
Aims of research:
The aim of the research is to develop
an efficient data retrieval technique
to access cloud based encrypted data

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References
[1] He, K., Chen, J., Du, R., Wu, Q.,
Xue, G. and Zhang, X., Deypos:
Deduplicatable dynamic proof of
storage for multi-user
environments. IEEE Transactions on
Computers, 65(12), pp.3631-3645,
2016.
[2] Xia, Z., Wang, X., Sun, X. and
Wang, Q., A secure and dynamic multi-
keyword ranked search scheme over
encrypted cloud data. IEEE
transactions on parallel and
distributed systems, 27(2), pp.340-352,
2016.
[3] Ren, Yong-Jun, Jian Shen, Jin Wang,
Jin Han, and Sung-Young Lee. "Mutual
verifiable provable data auditing in
public cloud storage." 網網網網網網網網 16, no.
2 (2015): 317-323.