Safe Haven in the Cloud: Secure Access Controlled File Encryption (SAFE) System

The evolution of cloud computing has revolutionized how the computing is abstracted and utilized on remote third party infrastructure. It is now feasible to try out novel ideas over the cloud with no or very low initial cost. There are challenges in adopting cloud computing; but with obstacles, we have opportunities for research in several aspects of cloud computing. One of the main issue is the data security and privacy of information stored and processed at cloud provider's systems. In this work, a practical system (called SAFE) is designed and implemented to securely store/retrieve user's files on the third party cloud storage systems using well established cryptographic techniques. It utilizes the client-side, multilevel, symmetric/asymmetric encryption and decryption operations to provide policy-based access control and assured deletion of remotely hosted client's files. The SAFE is a generic application which can be extended to support any cloud storage provider as long as there is an API which support basic file upload and download operations.