Comparative Analysis: ABE vs PKE for Cloud Data Security, Project

This project delves into the critical aspects of securing data in cloud environments, focusing on the comparative analysis of Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) and Public Key Encryption (PKE). The project begins by outlining the challenges in securing data in cloud computing, where unauthorized access poses a significant risk. The literature review explores Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) and public-key encryption, highlighting their respective strengths and weaknesses. The research aims to understand the levels of encryption required, the types of data that need encryption, and the authorized users. The research design employs a qualitative approach, gathering data through questionnaires and interviews to analyze the efficiency of both encryption schemes. The project aims to provide a comprehensive overview of ABE schemes, compare them with PKE mechanisms, and analyze their differences, including their advantages and disadvantages. The project also explores the practical implementation of a concrete ABE scheme. The study uses crowdsourcing and interviews with security personnel to gain insights into user interactions with cloud computing and the effectiveness of current encryption schemes. The project offers valuable insights into data security and access control in cloud environments.

Enabling Fine-Grained Access Control Over Encrypted Data
SUMMARY OF PROJECT
Current technological advancements have invented new ways in which users can access and store their
data. Even though the current schemes are relatively cheap and easy to use, there is still a challenge.
This can be attributed to the fact that some of the information can be accessed and misused by
unauthorized attackers. Use of cloud computing as a way of storing data has been widely adopted. In
order to ensure that the information stored by the user can only be accessed by authorized parties,
encryption schemes have been used. In this report, we will elaborate on both the attribute-based
encryption and public-key encryption.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Even though the use of cloud computing is more effective, there has been a challenge in relation to
securing the users' data. In the cases where the cloud server has been breached, the attacker can misuse
the customers' information. In order to satisfy security efficiency of the users' data, there must be
security measures set aside to prevent the attacker from accessing an misusing the clients' data -the
technique used must be reliable
LITERATURE REVIEW
The use of cloud computing offers an on-demand infrastructure when the user wants to access and use
data and other resources. The companies offering the service have to use encryption techniques to
secure data in the private cloud. One of the schemes used to secure the data through encryption is the
cipher-text-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE). This technique allows the user to share
sensitive information through encryption embedded with hidden access control policies (Zhang &
Zhang, 2011).
The public key encryption technique is ineffective in securing sensitive infraction. This is because it
applies an asymmetric cryptography system where public keys are used for encryption and decryption.
This makes it possible for any user to access the data if they have the public keys. The advantage of the
CP-ABE over public-key encryption is that only the authorized user can access and use the data. This
technique also ensures scalability since the policy attributes can be added. The use of several rules/
attributes will help is information audits in cases where the authorized users access and misuse the data
shared.
RESEARCH AIMS
The following are the research questions that steered the research:
a) What is encryption?
b) What level of encryption should be implemented?

c) Whose data needs to be encrypted?
d) What kind of data should be encrypted?
The above questions were used to select the appropriate techniques to use to secure users' data in cloud
computing. Not all the data in the cloud need to be encrypted since there can be accessed an used by
the public (Wang, Wong, Liao, & Chen,2011). From the questions, what data? And whose data? Help in
implementing an encryption technique that will ensure that only authorized users can access data within
their access control.
RESEARCH DESIGN
To archive the objectives of the study and fulfill the research question, a research technique
must be employed. This offers a compact framework for carrying out the activities necessary to
complete the study. The research techniques used for this study is a qualitative approach – it aims to
study the efficiency of attribute-based encryption and public-key encryption. The efficiency of either of
the scheme is in relation to its risk of intrusion.
The setting of the research is to mobile clients who use cloud computing to run some of their daily
functions. The participant involved in this research will be mobilized through crowdsourcing. The
participant volunteer to act as a participant for this research. The use of a questionnaire will be the only
data collection technique used from crowd souring. In addition to the crowdsourced participants,
interviews will be administered to the security personnel. The interview will offer a more
understanding of the current encryption techniques used and their characteristics.
The data collected from the crowd sources volunteers will give a scope of the users' interaction with
cloud computing. On the other hand, the data collected from the interview will be used to understand
the current encryption scheme and how effective they are.

References
Wang, Y., Wong, K. W., Liao, X., & Chen, G. (2011). A new chaos-based fast image encryption
algorithm. Applied soft computing, 11(1), 514-522.
Zhang, B., & Zhang, F. (2011). An efficient public key encryption with conjunctive-subset keywords
search. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 34(1), 262-267.