Importance Of Data Security In Hybrid Cloud Storage In Health Sector

Background

This research project aims to provide an outline to accentuate the importance of data security in hybrid cloud using encryption with AES for the health sector. The technology used is hybrid cloud. The technique used is encryption with AES and the domain for this project for implementing data security is the health sector. As cloud computing technology is advancing at a significant rate, the need for data security in cloud computing is also increasing at the same rate. Cloud computing technology has been implemented in the health sector to provide better service to the patients and maintain a proper system for patient prioritisation (Daman & Tripathi, (2015). Some of the issues related to healthcare organisation are data accessibility and data privacy of the patient. Hybrid cloud is a vital in cloud computing model that is used commercially and it is the combination of private cloud and public cloud (Nepal, Ranjan & Choo,  (2015). Therefore, the research aims and objectives are provided along with a brief outline of the research problem. Furthermore, this study demonstrates a detailed idea concerning the procedures to be used in this project.

Hybrid cloud is the environment for cloud computing that utilises private cloud and services of public cloud with the help of a bridge between these two platforms. The healthcare organisations obtains greater flexibility and several more options for data deployment with the introduction of hybrid cloud (Dinh et al., 2013). It allows the movement of workloads between the public and private clouds with the needs of computing and changes in cost (Hashem et al., 2015). The concept of hybrid cloud storage is a modified approach to manage storage with the use of off-site and local resources. Hybrid cloud provides additional flexibility and greater optimised workloads for the business. It provides a greater optimisation in billing and a better availability and stability of data in the system is obtained (Fernández-Alemán et al., 2013). The threats related to hybrid cloud that the health sector might face are as follows:

1. There is a lack of encryption in hybrid cloud.
2. Inadequate assessment of risks in security are a threat.
3. Weak management of security.
4. Some of the cyber-attacks like Dos or DDos attacks poses a significant threat in the hybrid cloud storage.
5. The threat of leakage of data from the storage in hybrid cloud.

The research aims to discuss the importance of this research is to discuss the importance of data security in hybrid cloud and propose a system for increasing the data security provided in storage of cloud computing. The main objectives of this research are:

1. To explore the importance of hybrid cloud in the health sector.
2. To evaluate the importance of data security in the hybrid cloud storage for the health department.
3. To propose a system for providing better security of the data of patients in hybrid cloud for the health sector.

According to Abbas and Khan (2014), Healthcare domain has started to shift to cloud computing storage system along with many other sectors. With the introduction of cloud storage in the health sector, there is an increase in the accessibility of electronic medical records of the patients among the clinics and hospitals. According to Yang, Li and Niu (2015), Cloud storage enables a better storage centre for the data of patients. The tedious task of managing infrastructure and the cost of development and maintenance is reduced with the help of cloud storage facility in the health department. The security and privacy of the data of patients needs to be considered and appropriate system should be designed to protect the sensitive medical records and details of the patient as per Fabian, Ermakova and Junghanns (2015). According to Sultan (2014), the increase in the number of medical devices connected that are constantly collecting data has led to the increase in usage of cloud storage for storing clinical data, which is HIPAA-compliant and easily accessible to authorised users. As the maintenance cost of storing data on-premises is higher and the quality of HIPAA-compliance is better in cloud storage, several hospitals and clinics are progressing towards the idea of implementing cloud. The quality of cloud storage to provide scalable and flexible environment at a significant lower cost than the storage facility of on-premises storage is the main reason why so many entities are shifting to cloud storage.

Research Aim and Objectives

According to Bouchti, Bahsani and Nahhal (2016), the technology of using cloud storage in the healthcare department has grown because there is an increase the data amount that is generally stored in the storage systems in the sector. The importance of protecting privacy of the patients, compliance with the laws of healthcare, and assurance of access of data by the authorised users are the basic importance of cloud security. Healthcare organisations are emphasising on implementation of cloud computing to improve efficiency of data analytics and cost reduction of the administrative tasks as per Babitha and Babu Ramesh (2016). The major challenges in the cloud storage is to provide two facilities to the patients, which are

1. The level of privacy of the data of patient has to be increased
2. Consistent information is provided to the patient to ensure integrity of data is maintained.

According to Bahga and Madisetti (2013), data traceability, data accessibility, data integrity and data confidentiality are the four major components in data security. The authenticity of communication and transaction of data and the assurance of authorised users accessing the information are covered in data traceability. According to Modi and Kapadia (2017), Data availability refers to the basic need of the supervisors and managers in a hospital or clinic to have readily accessible data at all times. The integrity of data is the assurance provided to the patients about their sensitive data being stored safely and securely.

The challenges of data security in cloud storage includes the following issues:

Confidentiality: According to Martínez-Pérez, De La Torre-Díez and López-Coronado (2015),the data of patients are accessed by proper authorised users access and this protection against any unauthorised users is referred as confidentiality of data. The users without any proper permission are not provided access to sensitive medical data of the healthcare organisation that is stored in the infrastructure of cloud. Due to the increase in access points of the cloud infrastructure, there is an increase in the threat of compromising of secured medical data of the patients. Cloud storage assists in managing and maintaining the control over medical data of healthcare organisations, which is stored across several locations of remote cloud database. Confidentiality might be achieved using encryption algorithms and techniques that includes public key pairs, symmetric key and length of the key and management of the key in the case of symmetric cipher. Medical data confidentiality is connected with user authentication in cloud computing. For attaining confidentiality, the account of the users must be protected from attackers. These systems are vulnerable to attack if there is a lack in procedure of strong authentication which will lead to the breach in the account of users.

Concept of Hybrid Cloud Storage in Health sector

Integrity: According to Yakoubov et al. (2014),integrity of data determines that the data of the patients can only be updated or altered by the personnel with official access. This is related to the hardware devices, software related to the organisation and the data of the healthcare organisation. The modifications that are done in the data of the healthcare organisations are monitored by the techniques implemented to safeguard data. Cloud storage provides the option of maintaining the integrity of data along with the confidentiality of the data. Atomicity, Isolation, Consistency and Durability (ACID) are the features that are provided by the cloud service provider to maintain data integrity in the cloud storage.

Availability: According to He and Zeadally (2015), it determines that the property is only accessed and is readily available by the authorised users whenever it is required. The challenge that lies in this feature is that the information can be attacked and it can be made unavailable on a temporary basis or permanently, which can be a loss to the organisation. Natural disaster and Dos attacks are the major reasons for unavailability of information to the authorised personnel. As per Lounis et al. (2016), the threat of DDos attacks can affect the networks and it can prove to be a major assault on the data system of the organisation.

Privacy: According to Thilakanathanet al. (2014), this control of cloud storage determines the assurance of disclosure of sensitive information to the unauthorised users. Privacy is important for cloud computing infrastructure as it provides compliance with HIPAA standards and it helps in gaining trust for the organisations of healthcare. Cloud service provider need to deliver a standard level of privacy to the data of the healthcare organisation that is stored in the cloud storage.

As the reports conclude, there were some research on the need to implement cloud storage for the data of healthcare organisation and some research was conducted to discover the challenges regarding the data security in the organisations but there were no research done about the data security in cloud storage using AES encryption in healthcare sector. This research will emphasize on the need of providing better security to the data of the healthcare organisations using AES encryption.

Primary and secondary data sources will be used in this research. Primary data will be survey and interview are the various sources of primary data collection, and the secondary sources will comprise all printed or online platform data that are accessible in all printed form. This study will contain both types of data while carrying out the study.  

Concept of Data Security in Cloud Storage of Health Sector

The collected data will be altered into percentages and numeric, for gain an inclusive and carry out a contrast of the composed data. The pictorial or graphical presentation will be presented using the data that is converted in to graphs and charts. The information will be gathered from the interview will be written considering various themes that as directly related to the research topic.

The entire research will follow strict ethical guidelines. Forceful participation of any unwilling participant will not be conducted and every participant will have to sign a participation form to determine a willing participation . Survey paper should not portray any kind of advertisement of the company by the help of logo or symbol but the only purpose of this research is academic and nothing else. In case any kind of permission is mandatory to conduct any survey, proper authorisation letter will be taken from the management body and will be presented everywhere. For conducting any kind of secondary investigation, plagiarism activity will be avoided using proper referencing. Thus, violation of the norms should not be done and proper regulation have to maintained to follow the ethical guidelines.

After reviewing the 12 journals, it can be concluded that the best method to provide data security to the hybrid cloud storage using encryption with AES in the healthcare sector is by using ElGamal encryption. This encryption system is an algorithm of asymmetric key for cryptography of public-key (Wang et al., 2015). Therefore the proposed system to provide data security in the hybrid cloud of health sector is ElGamal encryption system with AES.

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded that the trouble of cost management and collecting collective information in the healthcare organisations can be solved by using cloud storage. The cloud-based applications can impart some benefits to the patients, insurance companies, physicians, pharmacies, imagining centres of the healthcare organisations. Security challenges and interoperability may rise due to the introduction of cloud storage. To provide better security to the cloud storage of the health sector, ElGamal encryption system with AES can be implemented by the healthcare organisations.

References

Abbas, A., & Khan, S. U. (2014). A review on the state-of-the-art privacy-preserving approaches in the e-health clouds. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 18(4), 1431-1441. 10.1109/JBHI.2014.2300846

Babitha,M.P. & Babu Ramesh, K.R.(2016). Secure cloud storage using AES encryption. 10.1109/ICACDOT.2016.7877709

Bahga, A., & Madisetti, V. K. (2013). A cloud-based approach for interoperable electronic health records (EHRs). IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 17(5), 894-906. 10.1109/JBHI.2013.2257818

Concept of Challenges of Data Security in Cloud Storage

Bouchti, A.E., Bahsani,S. & Nahhal,T.(2016). Encryption as a service for data healthcare cloud security.  2016 Fifth International Conference on Future Generation Communication Technologies (FGCT). 10.1109/FGCT.2016.7605072

Daman, R., & Tripathi, M. M. (2015). Encryption Tools for Secured Health Data in Public Cloud. International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, 2(11). 10.1109/FGCT.2016.7605072

Dinh, H. T., Lee, C., Niyato, D., & Wang, P. (2013). A survey of mobile cloud computing: architecture, applications, and approaches. Wireless communications and mobile computing, 13(18), 1587-1611. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcm.1203

Fabian, B., Ermakova, T., & Junghanns, P. (2015). Collaborative and secure sharing of healthcare data in multi-clouds. Information Systems, 48, 132-150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2014.05.004

Fernández-Alemán, J. L., Señor, I. C., Lozoya, P. Á. O., & Toval, A. (2013). Security and privacy in electronic health records: A systematic literature review. Journal of biomedical informatics, 46(3), 541-562. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2012.12.003

Hashem, I. A. T., Yaqoob, I., Anuar, N. B., Mokhtar, S., Gani, A., & Khan, S. U. (2015). The rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues. Information Systems, 47, 98-115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2014.07.006

He, D., & Zeadally, S. (2015). An analysis of rfid authentication schemes for internet of things in healthcare environment using elliptic curve cryptography. IEEE internet of things journal, 2(1), 72-83.-906. 10.1109/JIOT.2014.2360121

Lounis, A., Hadjidj, A., Bouabdallah, A., & Challal, Y. (2016). Healing on the cloud: Secure cloud architecture for medical wireless sensor networks. Future Generation Computer Systems, 55, 266-277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2015.01.009

Martínez-Pérez, B., De La Torre-Díez, I., & López-Coronado, M. (2015). Privacy and security in mobile health apps: a review and recommendations. Journal of medical systems, 39(1), 181. 10.1007/s10916-014-0181-3

Modi, K. J., & Kapadia, N. (2017). Securing Healthcare Information over Cloud Using Hybrid Approach. In Progress in Advanced Computing and Intelligent Engineering (pp. 63-74). Springer, Singapore. 10.1007/978-981-13-0224-4_6

Nepal, S., Ranjan, R., & Choo, K. K. R. (2015). Trustworthy processing of healthcare big data in hybrid clouds. IEEE Cloud Computing, 2(2), 78-84. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCC.2015.36

Thilakanathan, D., Chen, S., Nepal, S., Calvo, R., & Alem, L. (2014). A platform for secure monitoring and sharing of generic health data in the Cloud. Future Generation Computer Systems, 35, 102-113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2013.09.011

Wang, L., Ranjan, R., Ko?odziej, J., Zomaya, A., & Alem, L. (2015). Software tools and techniques for big data computing in healthcare clouds. Future Generation Computer Systems, 43(C), 38-39. 10.1016/j.future.2014.11.001

Yakoubov, S., Gadepally, V., Schear, N., Shen, E., & Yerukhimovich, A. (2014, September). A survey of cryptographic approaches to securing big-data analytics in the cloud. In High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC), 2014 IEEE (pp. 1-6). IEEE. 10.1109/HPEC.2014.7040943

Yang, J. J., Li, J. Q., & Niu, Y. (2015). A hybrid solution for privacy preserving medical data sharing in the cloud environment. Future Generation Computer Systems, 43, 74-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.06.004

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