A secure data storage based on revocation game-theoretic approaches in cloud computing environments

Cloud computing is an innovative model that is gaining attention and wide popularity among IT professionals and users. It provides a new mode of use of IT resources by offering everything as a service (storage, servers, network, etc.) and provisioning resources on-demand. In cloud computing environments, users outsource their data to distributed data centers in the cloud and entrust cloud providers with its storage and processing. However, data outsourcing and multi-tenants introduce new security issues that have to be addressed. In fact, being stored externally, data are no longer under the control of their owners. The storage and processing mechanisms may not be fully trustworthy and thus data confidentiality and privacy may be at risk. Therefore, in this paper, we will deal with securing stored data in shared cloud computing environment. First, we will present an overview of the main security issues addressed in the literature. Then we will focus on providing a game-theoretic model to secure the stored data from malicious users. To that purpose, we have proposed a sequential revocation game where cloud users have to choose the best strategy from a set of three strategies in order to revoke and eliminate the malicious user while minimizing their costs. At the end, we will discuss the different outcomes of this game using the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium concept.