A secure and lightweight approach for critical data security in cloud

Cloud computing is a model that provides ubiquitous, on demand access to a shared pool of computing resources including networks, servers, storage, application and services that can be easily provisioned and released. As Cloud is a shared and distributed environment, the need for ensuring security of its critical infrastructure that includes computing, network and storage is immense. One of the critical resources to look after in cloud environment is the data which is stored in files. The files can be configuration file at servers, or private user confidential files at users own work space but they all have a risk of data modification associated with them. If user data is modified through an attack then it will decline the trust of user on cloud services and if the important configuration files are modified, they will disrupt the functioning of cloud environment, like attacker can escalate its privileges and access to critical resources through such tampering and modifications to important files. The paper solves the problem addressed and focuses on a proposal and prototype implementation of a tool built for Cloud File integrity establishment and monitoring that establishes and checks file Integrity periodically. The novelty of the approach lies in the fact that the tool does not require any database for storing the integrity of files and the integrity of the file is the compressed encrypted hash of the data stored in the file that can't be reverse engineered by an attacker easily. The tool is lightweight and initial results dictate that it is scalable and efficient. The Real time deployment and analysis of tool is under progress.