obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners.Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/).In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail repository@westminster.ac.uk Abstract-The infrastructure cloud (IaaS) service model offers improved resource flexibility and availability, where tenants -insulated from the minutiae of hardware maintenance -rent computing resources to deploy and operate complex systems. Large-scale services running on IaaS platforms demonstrate the viability of this model; nevertheless, many organizations operating on sensitive data avoid migrating operations to IaaS platforms due to security concerns. In this paper, we describe a framework for data and operation security in IaaS, consisting of protocols for a trusted launch of virtual machines and domain-based storage protection. We continue with an extensive theoretical analysis with proofs about protocol resistance against attacks in the defined threat model. The protocols allow trust to be established by remotely attesting host platform configuration prior to launching guest virtual machines and ensure confidentiality of data in remote storage, with encryption keys maintained outside of the IaaS domain. Presented experimental results demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed protocols. The framework prototype was implemented on a test bed operating a public electronic health record system, showing that the proposed protocols can be integrated into existing cloud environments.

While cloud computing has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the potential efficiency and cost savings of outsourcing the storage and management of data and applications, a number of vulnerabilities that led to multiple attacks have deterred many potential users.As a result, experts in the field argued that new mechanisms are needed in order to create trusted and secure cloud services. Such mechanisms would eradicate the suspicion of users towards cloud computing by providing the necessary security guarantees. Searchable Encryption is among the most promising solutions -one that has the potential to help offer truly secure and privacypreserving cloud services. We start this paper by surveying the most important searchable encryption schemes and their relevance to cloud computing. In light of this analysis we demonstrate the inefficiencies of the existing schemes and expand our analysis by discussing certain confidentiality and privacy issues. Further, we examine how to integrate such a scheme with a popular cloud platform. Finally, we have chosen -based on the findings of our analysis -an * Corresponding Author. Preprint submitted to Computer Science Review JournalAugust 14, 2017 existing scheme and implemented it to review its practical maturity for deployment in real systems. The survey of the field, together with the analysis and with the extensive experimental results provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical and practical aspects of searchable encryption.

Cloud computing and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) are emerging and promising technologies, however their adoption is hampered by data security concerns. At the same time, Trusted Computing (TC) is experiencing an increasing interest as a security mechanism for IaaS. In this paper we present a protocol to ensure the launch of a virtual machine (VM) instance on a trusted remote compute host. Relying on Trusted Platform Module operations such as binding and sealing to provide integrity guarantees for clients that require a trusted VM launch, we have designed a trusted launch protocol for VM instances in public IaaS environments. We also present a proof-of-concept implementation of the protocol based on OpenStack, an open-source IaaS platform. The results provide a basis for the use of TC mechanisms within IaaS platforms and pave the way for a wider applicability of TC to IaaS security.

Abstract-As adoption of e-health solutions advances, new computing paradigms -such as cloud computing -bring the potential to improve efficiency in managing medical health records and help reduce costs. However, these opportunities introduce new security risks which can not be ignored. Based on our experience with deploying part of the Swedish electronic health records management system in an infrastructure cloud, we make an overview of major requirements that must be considered when migrating e-health systems to the cloud. Furthermore, we describe in-depth a new attack vector inherent to cloud deployments and present a novel data confidentiality and integrity protection mechanism for infrastructure clouds. This contribution aims to encourage exchange of best practices and lessons learned in migrating public e-health systems to the cloud.

Cloud computing has evolved from a promising concept to one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. However, many businesses and individuals continue to view cloud computing as a technology that risks exposing their data to unauthorized users. We introduce a data confidentiality and integrity protection mechanism for Infrastructure-asa-Service (IaaS) clouds, which relies on trusted computing principles to provide transparent storage isolation between IaaS clients. We also address the absence of reliable data sharing mechanisms, by providing an XML-based language framework which enables clients of IaaS clouds to securely share data and clearly define access rights granted to peers. The proposed improvements have been prototyped as a code extension for a popular cloud platform.