In layman terms, cloud computing is a platform that allows anyone to utilize IT resources such as servers, databases, applications, etc. through an internet connection. A 3rd party cloud services provider maintains all these resources. Hence, providing companies the flexibility to add on resources based on business requirements.

Cloud computing is an emerging trend, but there are many issues related to data privacy and security. As the data travels to and fro from cloud servers to the company network, it is susceptible to hacking just like any other internet service. Therefore, as a business, you have to check out the data privacy and security architectures of your cloud service provider.

A reputed cloud service provider implements various encryption algorithms to secure the transfer of data. In this article, we will discuss multiple encryption algorithms for cloud data security and how it ensures safe and secure data transmission that makes cloud reliable for your organization.

Let’s first understand the benefits of cloud computing.

Also Read: 7 Cybersecurity Steps You Should Already Be Taking.

Benefits of Cloud computing

1. Cost reduction: Cloud allows you to reduce your IT bills as you don’t have to buy expensive hardware and staff a technical team to maintain those resources regularly.

2. Data Backup and recovery: Cloud stores your business data as per your requirements, and you can quickly recover it if anything goes wrong.

3. Broad network access: Cloud services are location-agnostic. Through an open network that allows accessing the data anytime and anywhere by various devices such as smartphones, laptops, etc.

4. Multisharing: Cloud works in a distributed and shared mode that allows multiple users and applications can work more effectively by sharing common infrastructure.

5. Collaboration: Cloud provides an easy way to work with a different group of people together for a significant project or application in an effective manner.

6. Scalability: With Cloud storage, if the user business has experienced growth, he/she needs to extend the pay only for storage requirements.

Challenges of Cloud computing

Cloud computing provides a wide range of benefits. On top of that, it has to tackle many problems that have to be analyzed. Data security is one of the significant challenges of cloud computing technology. Many doubts have been raised about the secrecy, misuse of information, availability, and many more.

Let’s see some security challenge that has to concern while adopting Cloud computing

Privacy of data Data breach Data loss Insecure access points Lack of visibility and control Transmission of data Data integrity Confidentiality of data.

Also Read: Smart Home Security Basics and How to Improve It.

What are the Cryptographic algorithms?

A cryptographic algorithm is a well-defined technique of converting data into an unreadable form that hides the data for unauthorized users. This algorithm is used to encrypt or decrypt the data. In general, there are three types of Cryptographic algorithms are as follows.

Symmetric key cryptography: It is a system where the sender and receiver have the same key to encrypt and decrypt messages.

Asymmetric key cryptography: It is a system where a pair of keys are used, such as a Public key is used to encrypt data for everyone and a private key is used to decrypt data for the receiver alone.

Hushing key: It is a value of plain text with the fixed-length that makes it impossible to recover the content. Many Operating systems use the hush key to encrypt the password.

The main components of Cryptosystems are as follows.

Plain text : It is an original form of data that is used to protect during transmission

Ciphertext : It is an unreadable form of text after encryption

Encryption algorithm : It is a mathematical process used to convert a plain text to ciphertext

Decryption algorithm : It is used to convert ciphertext to plain text

Encryption key : It is key used by the sender for the Encryption algorithm process.

Decryption key: It is a key used by the receiver for the Decryption process.

Encryption algorithms for Cloud security

Encryption algorithms play a vital role in tackling the problem of cloud security. It is a mathematical process used to convert the plain text into ciphertext. It uses an algorithm to convert text into the meaningless text, which is ciphertext, and a key is required to translate the text into meaningful text. Many algorithms are used for cloud security are discussed further.

1. Data Encryption Standard (DES)

It is a symmetric key algorithm used for the encryption of digital data. It works with the same secret key for encrypting or decrypting data messages. In this process, the initial permutation rearranges the 64 bits plain text that works in a predefined form. DES implements the Feistel cipher that consists of 16 Feistel rounds. Each round uses the 48 bit round keys that apply to the plain text. These round keys generate sixteen 48 bit keys out of 56 cipher keys. It results in the output of a 64-bit ciphertext.

2. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

It is a most adopted symmetric encryption that operates computation on bytes instead of bits, treating 128 bits of plain text as 16 bytes. These bytes are arranged as a matrix of four columns and four rows that operates data using permutation and substitution. The key specifies the number of transformation rounds used in the encryption process.

3. Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman (RSA)

It is an asymmetric algorithm that uses several data block sizes and data keys. It has keys for both encryption and decryption of data and also two prime numbers to generate a public key and a private key. This algorithm is used to secure communication and authentication on an open communication network.

4. Blowfish algorithm

It is a symmetric algorithm that encrypts a 64-bit block with a variable key length of 32-448 bits at 16 number of rounds. It provides a reasonable encryption rate with no cryptanalysis techniques found to date. It is a significantly fast and secure cipher block not subject to any patent; thus, it is available free for anyone to use.

5. Homomorphic algorithm

In this algorithm, encryption and decryption take place with the client and provider that can be operated upon encrypted data. It solves the problem of data threats while transferring the data between client and service provider, it hides the plain text from the service provider, and the provider operates upon ciphertext only. It allows the complex mathematical operation to protect the original data from the service provider.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed 5 encryption algorithms for cloud data security. Encryption algorithm plays a vital role in securing the data by using the algorithm techniques. Data security is the most challenging issue in Cloud computing technology. However, the Encryption algorithm has solved the problem of security. Among all the algorithms, the Homomorphic algorithm is the most suitable algorithm to secure the organization’s confidential data in an open network. It performs operations on the encrypted data that enables high security when compared with other security algorithms such as DES, AES, RSA, and Blowfish algorithms.