Multi-user search-able attribute-based encryption for outsourced big data for Create, Update, Read and Delete Operations

Abstract

Large amounts of data is generated every day as well as the need to ingest, process, store, and maintain all that data. The scale of data is so large that normal file access and processing present different challenges. Data owners can attempt to store and share data on premise but then lose out on savings from the cloud. Data owners can store all their data on the cloud to save money but then run into a myriad of security challenges. Attribute based encryption is the key to tackling these challenges. A method leveraging key policy attribute-based encryption (KP-ABE) to allow multiple users to ingest data into a system encrypted then have other users search over its contents to receive files while using KP-ABE as a distributed authorization method will be presented, tested against AES, and system metrics will be presented. The solution presented will allow users to use a representational state transfer application programming interface to interact with the system while not having to deal with auxiliary files or encryption libraries to upload documents into the cloud and be encrypted at rest.