Advanced security in fog environments using encryption and adaptive user activity tracking

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Cloud Computing

Background:

• Fog computing environments present unique data protection challenges due to increased data storage.
• Existing security measures may not adequately address the risks of data exploitation in fog cloud storage.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Adaptable User Activity Tracking (ASUT) for enhanced security and data protection in fog cloud environments.
• To integrate Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-256, Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-512, and user activity tracking (UAT) into a unified system.

Main Methods:

• Files are encrypted using AES-256, with the key hashed via SHA-512 and stored in the fog cloud.
• AES decryption uses key expansion, and SHA-512 verifies the user-provided key against the stored hash.
• User activity is monitored in parallel to detect abnormal behavior and unauthorized access attempts.

Main Results:

• The proposed ASUT system demonstrated a 43.39% increase in encryption speed and a 66% increase in decryption speed.
• ASUT achieved 19.86% higher throughput compared to competing methods.
• Experimental results indicate improved computational efficiency and practical feasibility.

Conclusions:

• ASUT effectively mitigates risks associated with unauthorized data access in fog cloud environments.
• The integration of encryption, hashing, and activity tracking provides a robust security solution.
• The system offers practical feasibility and improved performance for fog cloud data protection.