Security Challenges in Cloud Storage

Abstract—Cloud computing is the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients. Cloud computing has brought advantages in the form of online storage. Data security for such a cloud service encompasses several aspects including secure channels, access controls, and encryption. And, when we consider the security of data in a cloud, we must consider the security triad: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. In the cloud storage model, data is stored on multiple virtualized servers. Physically the resources will span multiple servers and can even span storage sites. Cloud computing has been envisioned as the de-facto solution to the rising storage costs of IT Enterprises. One of the important concerns that need to be addressed is to assure the customer of the integrity i.e. correctness of his data in the cloud. As the data is physically not accessible to the user the cloud should provide a way for the user to check if the integrity of his data is maintained or is compromised. In this paper we provide a scheme which gives a proof of data integrity in the cloud which the customer can employ to check the correctness of his data in the cloud. This proof can be agreed upon by both the cloud and the customer and can be incorporated in the Service level agreement (SLA). This scheme ensures that the storage at the client side is minimal which will be beneficial for thin clients.