Effective encryption

Some advanced encryption algorithms which have been applied into the cloud computing increase the protection of privacy.

Attribute-Based Encryption Algorithm

Ciphertext-policy ABE (CP-ABE)

In the CP-ABE, the encryptor controls access strategy, as the strategy gets more complex, the design of system public key becomes more complex, and the security of the system is proved to be more difficult. The main research work of CP-ABE is focused on the design of the access structure.

Key-policy ABE (KP-ABE)

In the KP-ABE, attribute sets are used to explain the encrypted texts and the private keys with the specified encrypted texts that users will have the left to decrypt.

Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)

Fully Homomorphic encryption allows straightforward computations on encrypted information, and also allows computing sum and product for the encrypted data without decryption.

Searchable Encryption (SE)

Searchable Encryption is a cryptographic primitive which offers secure search functions over encrypted data. In order to improve search efficiency, an SE solution generally builds keyword indexes to securely perform user queries. Existing SE schemes can be classified into two categories: SE based on secret-key cryptography and SE based on public-key cryptography.

Compliance

Numerous laws and regulations pertain to the storage and use of data. In the US these include privacy or data protection laws, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA), and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, among others.
Similar laws may apply in different legal jurisdictions and may differ quite markedly from those enforced in the US. Cloud service users may often need to be aware of the legal and regulatory differences between the jurisdictions. For example, data stored by a Cloud Service Provider may be located in, say, Singapore and mirrored in the US.
Many of these regulations mandate particular controls (such as strong access controls and audit trails) and require regular reporting. Cloud customers must ensure that their cloud providers adequately fulfil such requirements as appropriate, enabling them to comply with their obligations since, to a large extent, they remain accountable.

Business continuity and data recovery

Cloud providers have business continuity and data recovery plans in place to ensure that service can be maintained in case of a disaster or an emergency and that any data loss will be recovered. These plans may be shared with and reviewed by their customers, ideally dovetailing with the customers' own continuity arrangements. Joint continuity exercises may be appropriate, simulating a major Internet or electricity supply failure for instance.

Logs and audit trails

In addition to producing logs and audit trails, cloud providers work with their customers to ensure that these logs and audit trails are properly secured, maintained for as long as the customer requires, and are accessible for the purposes of forensic investigation (e.g., eDiscovery).

Unique compliance requirements

In addition to the requirements to which customers are subject, the data centers used by cloud providers may also be subject to compliance requirements. Using a cloud service provider (CSP) can lead to additional security concerns around data jurisdiction since customer or tenant data may not remain on the same system, or in the same data center or even within the same provider's cloud.