Accessing Confidential Data in Public Clouds

Abstract

The user’s perception that the confidentiality of their data is endangered by internal and external attacks is limiting the diffusion of public cloud database services. In this context, the use of cryptography is complicated by high computational costs and restrictions on supported SQL operations over encrypted data. In this paper, we propose an architecture that takes advantage of adaptive encryption mechanisms to guarantee at runtime the best level of data confidentiality for any type of SQL operation. We demonstrate through a large set of experiments that these encryption schemes represent a feasible solution for achieving data confidentiality in public cloud databases, even from a performance point of view.