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Privacy in cloud computing environments: a survey and research challenges

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Abstract

Definitely, cloud computing represents a real evolution in the IT world that provides many advantages for both providers and users. This new paradigm includes several services that allow data storage and processing. However, outsourcing data to the cloud raises many issues related to privacy concerns. In fact, for some organizations and individuals, data privacy present a crucial aspect of their business. Indeed, their sensitive data (health, finance, personal information, etc.) have a very important value, and any infringement of privacy can cause great loss in terms of money and reputation. Therefore, without considering privacy issues, the adoption of cloud computing can be discarded by large spectra of users. In this paper, we provide a survey on privacy risks and challenges for public cloud computing. We present and evaluate the main existing solutions that have made great progress in this area. To better address privacy concerns, we point out considerations and guidelines while giving the remained open issues that require additional investigation efforts to fulfill preserving and enhancing privacy in public cloud.

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Abbreviations

Acc:

Accountability

CSA:

Cloud Security Alliance

CSB:

Cloud Service Broker

DLP:

Data Leakage Prevention

FIP:

Fair Information Practices

IaaS:

Infrastructure as a Service

IDD:

Illegitimate Data Dissemination

IDH:

Illegitimate Data Handling

PaaS:

Platform as a Service

PC:

Privacy Compliance

PDP:

Policy Decision Point

PEP:

Policy Enforcement Point

PII:

Personally Identifiable Information

Re:

Retention

SaaS:

Software as a Service

SCI:

System Call Interception

TCG:

Trusted Computing Group

TPM:

Trusted Platform Module

TTPM:

Trusted Third Party Mediator

USU:

Unauthorized Secondary Usage

VM:

Virtual Machine

XACML:

eXtensible Access Control Markup Language

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ReDCAD Laboratory, ENIS, University of Sfax, B.P. 1173, 3038, Sfax, Tunisia

    Amal Ghorbel & Mahmoud Ghorbel

  2. Digital Research Center of Sfax, B.P. 275, Sakiet Ezzit, 3021, Sfax, Tunisia

    Mohamed Jmaiel

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  1. Amal Ghorbel
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  2. Mahmoud Ghorbel
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  3. Mohamed Jmaiel
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Correspondence to Amal Ghorbel.

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Ghorbel, A., Ghorbel, M. & Jmaiel, M. Privacy in cloud computing environments: a survey and research challenges. J Supercomput 73, 2763–2800 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-016-1953-y

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