A Cloud-Based Vertical Data Distribution Approach for a Secure Data Access on Mobile Devices

Vertical database partitioning and the distribution of the partitions to different clouds improves the level of security and privacy, as the respective partitions from one cloud are worthless without the others. SeDiCo (a framework for a secure and distributed cloud data store) is an implementation of such an approach. However, the data partitioning and distribution approach demands a powerful client with sufficient hardware capabilities to efficiently join the partitioned data. Mobile devices have limited hardware resources in terms of memory, processing power, and storage capacity. The aim of this paper is to adopt the SeDiCo approach to mobile devices and to prove its feasibility. For this purpose, an Android application that implements the vertical partitioning approach is conceptualized and developed. Furthermore, the implementation is evaluated with the TPC-W benchmark. As a result, mobile devices should be enabled to use a secure and distributed cloud storage to foster a broader dissemination of Cloud Computing for mobile devices. Furthermore, this approach fosters bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategies for enterprises, as the level of data security and privacy is improved.