A Hybrid Scheme for Fine-Grained Search and Access Authorization in Fog Computing Environment

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Information Security
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Fog computing environments require efficient search over encrypted data on multiple nodes.
• Resource-constrained IoT devices necessitate lightweight security solutions for data management.
• Existing schemes often lack simultaneous support for searchable encryption and fine-grained access control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a fine-grained, owner-forced data search and access authorization scheme for user-fog-cloud environments.
• To address the limitations of current schemes by integrating searchable encryption and access control.
• To design a lightweight solution suitable for resource-constrained end users in fog computing.

Main Methods:

• Developed a hybrid scheme combining index and data encryption using a single Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) primitive.
• Implemented a mediated encryption mechanism for efficient user revocation.
• Enabled end devices to outsource decryption tasks to fog nodes.

Main Results:

• The proposed scheme simultaneously supports searchable encryption and fine-grained access control.
• Achieved significant improvements in data access efficiency and reduced key management costs.
• Demonstrated instantaneous user revocation without re-encrypting data.

Conclusions:

• The novel scheme is efficient and suitable for fog computing environments with resource-constrained devices.
• The integrated approach enhances security and usability for IoT data management.
• The findings contribute to the advancement of secure and efficient fog-based data processing.