An Efficient Secure Shared Storage Service with Fault and Investigative Disruption Tolerance

In this work we focus on solutions to an emerging threat to cloud-based services namely that of data seizures within a shared multiple customer architecture. We focus on the problem of securing distributed data storage in a cloud computing environment by designing a specialized multi-tenant data-storage architecture. The architecture we present not only provides high degrees of availability and confidentiality of customer data but is also able to offer these properties even after seizures of various parts of the infrastructure have been carried out through a judicial process. Our solution uses a novel way of storing customer data - combining the cryptographic scheme of secret sharing and combinatorial design theory, to ensure that the requirements of the architecture are met. Furthermore, we show that our proposed solution is efficient with respect to the amount of hardware infrastructure required, thus making the implementation and use of our proposed architecture cost-efficient for adoption by IT enterprises.