A Higher Performance Data Backup Scheme Based on Multi-Factor Authentication

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Information Security
• Cryptography

Background:

• Remote data backup offers enhanced security against data loss and tampering compared to local solutions.
• However, unsecured transmission channels and untrusted backup servers necessitate data encryption.
• Protecting the encryption key is paramount for secure remote data backup.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design a novel User-Centric Design (UCD) data backup scheme.
• To enhance the security of encryption keys for remote data backup.
• To provide a robust solution against various cyberattacks.

Main Methods:

• A multi-factor authentication approach is employed.
• A secret sharing scheme divides the encryption key into three parts.
• Key parts are stored across a laptop, smart card, and server.
• Key reconstruction requires any two parts combined with user's private information (password, identity, biometrics).

Main Results:

• The proposed scheme effectively protects the encryption key.
• Reconstruction of the encryption key is feasible using any two of the three distributed parts.
• The system demonstrates resistance against replay attacks, impersonation attacks (user and server), malicious servers, and offline password guessing.

Conclusions:

• The User-Centric Design (UCD) data backup scheme offers a secure method for protecting encryption keys.
• Multi-factor authentication and secret sharing enhance the overall security of remote data backup.
• The scheme provides robust protection against a wide range of security threats, contingent on sufficient biometric entropy.