Crypto cloud computing

Crypto cloud computing is a new secure cloud computing architecture. Cloud computing is a large-scale distributed computing model that is driven by economies of scale. It integrates a set of abstracted, virtualized, dynamically-scalable, and managed resources, such as computing power, storage, platforms, and services. External users can access to resources over the Internet using terminals, especially mobile terminals. Cloud architectures are developed in on-demand fashion. That is, the resources are dynamically assigned to a user according to his request, and relinquished after the job is done.

Cloud computing is a pool of services including the hardware and operating system infrastructure, the formation of systems management software, system and platform, and virtualization components. According to the level of its resources, cloud computing services can be divided into three categories, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Software as a service (SaaS).

Potential Threats

While enjoying the convenience of cloud computing, network security risks cannot be ignored. A customer's data security relies on security service from cloud computing providers, however, current structure of cloud computing services are provided by independent operators. First, the user's information security provides commerce and management. Second, the information leakage can be caused by technology flows of providers. What's more, cloud computing is an open environment. Hence, any weakness will cause information security risks of the whole system.

Crypto Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a combination of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS. To construct a secure cloud computing system, security at infrastructure, service platforms and application software levels have to be studied for a secure cloud computing system. Information encryption is one of effective means to achieve cloud computing information security. Traditionally, information encryption focuses on specified stages and operations, such as data encryption. For cloud computing, a system level design has to be implemented.

Crypto cloud computing is a new secure cloud computing architecture. It can provide protection of information security at the system level, and allows users access to shared services conveniently and accurately. Crypto cloud computing protects individual's connections with the outside world. It can protect the personal privacy without any delay of information exchange.

Crypto cloud computing is based on the Quantum Direct Key system. Quantum Direct Key (QDK) is a set of advanced asymmetric offline key mechanism. In this mechanism, all entities get public and private key pair according to their ID. Each entity only holds its own private key, but has a public key generator to generate any public key. In this system, an entity can produce the public key of any other entities offline, no any third-party agency (such as CA) is necessary. Crypto cloud computing based on QDK can avoid network traffic congestion, and other drawbacks using current encryption system.

In the crypto cloud computing system, each entity encrypts data using his/her own private key. All elements in the system such as cloud computing infrastructure units, platform, virtualization tools and all involved entities have their own keys. While fulfilling their own functions of information exchange and processing, all these elements will use the public key and private key to perform authentication first. What's more, events occur in the cloud computing are also assigned a unique key. In this way, crypto cloud system guarantees the security and credibility of information exchange.

Current cloud computing structure is developed for data and computing sharing. Security is not priority of system. On the contrary, encryption and security are inherently integrated in the crypto cloud computing based on the QDK. QDK authorized function units are bricks of crypto cloud computing. Besides primary function of data en/decryption, crypto cloud computing also provides many security related functions. For example, all channels sign transmit data using with their own keys, and the receiving terminals can avoid hijacking by verifying signature. What's more, the exact position of security leakage can be identified determined by analyzing digital signatures of forged data. Based on such capabilities, crypto-related functions can be provided as services in cloud, which is named as ‘Crypto as a service (CAAS)’.

Crypto cloud computing is not only the advances in information technology, but also innovation of logical relationship. In crypto cloud computing system, non-system data is not allowed to store and transmit. Private Key and offline public key, play a role of identification and certification in the process of information exchange. In this way, the cloud establishes a relationship of trust with a customer. Data identification depends on the logical relationship of mutual trust or need, and the logical relationship depends on the cloud customer.

Importance of Crypto Cloud Computing

Crypto cloud computing is a new framework for cyber resource sharing. It protects data security and privacy. Well, in cloud environment, crypto cloud computing guarantees the information security and integrity during whole procedure. Security management of cloud computing can also be performed by authorizing the signatures of every element involved. What's more, a user can retrieve all related resources using his QDK key.

There is no personal privacy under the current cloud framework, as pointed out by Mark Zuckerberg, 'the Age of Privacy Is Over '. However, with the development of crypto cloud computing, we can resolve the conflict between services data sharing and privacy security. It opens up new prospects for the development of information sharing technology.

References

[1] Cloud computing and grid computing 360-degree compared. Yong Zhao, Raicu. I, Lu.S. Grid Computing Environments Workshop, 2008. GCE '08.

[2] A taxonomy and survey of cloud computing systems. Eunmi Choi, Lumb. I. INC, IMS and IDC, 2009. NCM '09. Fifth International Joint Conference on.

[3]https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/26/detron-introduces-its-qdk-cryptosystem-to-enable-true-trusted-identity-for-the-cloud-era/

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20121213091207/http://gawker.com/5597100/mark-zuckerbergs-age-of-privacy-is-over