Fault-Tolerant Based Group Key Servers with Enhancement of Utilizing the Contributory Server for Cloud Storage Applications

Abstract

Group key management in cloud computing has become a trending topic in recent decades. This paper deals with the implementation of clustered structure based on centralized key management. In a centralized key management scheme, the Key Server is responsible for generating user keys and group keys of the cloud. The proposed work consists of a single Central Server and a number of sub-servers and each sub-server can manage multiple different groups. To achieve fault tolerance, each group is replicated into multiple different sub-servers. Users are allocated to a specific group and the size of the group is limited. Each group has a separate group key to avoid internal attacks and they can communicate through a central server. The proposed work encourages intergroup communication and essentially reduces the computations and storage complexity of the central server. Also, we propose to remove the rekeying process upon a new user joining by maintaining a file access list for each file, which will reduce the impact of the security features that even there is a leakage of the group key after the user leaves. Further, this paper proposes a contributory key management scheme where each member of the group is responsible for generating the group key.

KEYWORDS:

• Central server
• Centralized key management
• Contributory key management
• Fault tolerance
• File access list
• Group key management
• Sub-server

Additional information

Notes on contributors

K. Vivekrabinson

K. Vivekrabinson received both BE and ME degrees in computer science and engineering from Kalasalingam Institute of Technology, Krishnankovil, India, in the years 2014 and 2016, respectively. He started doing the research work at Mepco Schlenk Engineering College in the year 2017 and his area of interest includes cryptography and cloud computing. He has published four papers in various journals and conferences.

K. Muneeswaran

Muneeswaran Karuppiah received the Bachelor of Engineering degree in electronics and communication engineering from Madurai Kamarajar University, Tamil Nadu, India, in 1984 and the Master of Engineering in computer science and engineering from Bharathiyar University, Tamil Nadu, India, in 1990. In 2006, he received the PhD degree in computer science engineering from MS University, Tamil Nadu, India. He is in teaching and research for the past 34 years and 17 years, respectively. His research interests are image analysis, machine learning techniques, and data analytics. He has authored or co-authored about 125 publications and one book on “compiler design” with Oxford University Press. He is currently working as senior professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India, and he is a life member of Computer Society of India (CSI), Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE) and Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE). Email: [email protected]