Access Control Schemes in Cloud: Taxonomy and Performance

摘要

Most of the outsourced and shared data in the cloud are sensitive. Disclosure of sensitive data leads to identity theft and violation of privacy. The Cloud Service Provider (CSP) may be untrusted or curious; it will try to disclose/misuse the data. It is necessary to provide access control and security over the outsourced and shared data to hide it from the CSP and unauthorized users. Traditional access control schemes are prone to security threats in the cloud environment. Attribute-based access control (ABAC) schemes are more suitable for the cloud environment. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) provides fine-grained access control and security over the shared data to protect it from the CSP and unauthorized users. It preserves the privacy of users and the security of data being shared. Users can decrypt the data only if their attributes are satisfied with the access policy associated with the ciphertext. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of access control schemes in cloud. Performance comparison of various ABE schemes based on different parameters and thematic taxonomy of IBE are major contributions. Taxonomy and applications of ABE schemes are also dealt with. Thus, the survey opens up very interesting avenues for further research in this area, which are also discussed.