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

The use of fog computing is on the rise, adding new dimensions to security and, more specifically, to data protection in fog cloud environments. Storing fog-computing data increases the likelihood of data exploitation when it is uploaded to fog-computing storage. In this paper, Adaptable User Activity Tracking (ASUT) is introduced, integrating AES-256, SHA-512, and user activity tracking (UAT). The need to integrate activity monitoring into the ASUT to collect statistical information on user actions has been stated. The file uploaded to the fog computing storage is encrypted using a 256-bit AES key. Then, this key is hashed with SHA-512 and stored in the fog cloud. The AES expansion is used to decrypt the data, while the SHA-512 hash of the AES key is used to verify that the user-provided key matches the original before decryption proceeds-the hash is irreversible, and the original key is never stored in plaintext. The user must know the initial key to access the file further. When the client re-enters the fog, the algorithm compares the hashes of the two: the initial and the second entry keys. In parallel, the fog cloud broadcasts the user's actions to track any abnormal activity on the account. This mechanism helps mitigate risks of unauthorized data access and suggests ways to improve user protection. The proposed ASUT is designed using Python and PHP. Experimental results show that ASUT achieves 43.39% faster encryption, 66% faster decryption, and 19.86% higher throughput compared to the best-performing competing method, indicating improved computational efficiency and practical feasibility under the evaluated conditions.