Data deletion using non-retrievable bit sequence overwriting approach in cloud storage

Abstract

Cloud storage utilization rapidly increases due to the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially computing power and storage requirements. It reduces the data owner's direct involvement to perform various computing activities which include computing as well as data storage and update. At the same time, it increases the security challenge because the data owner’s do not have direct control over the remote resources. Specifically, the data deletion from the cloud storage do not give assurance to the owner about data deletion hence remanence of the data on the cloud storage may result in a potential threat. This paper aims to propose a trustworthy secure data storage mechanism by adopting the replication factor to increase the secure storage and availability of data in the cloud and secure data deletion method by overwriting it with a non-retrievable bit sequence. To make it more robust, the blockchain-based smart contract is developed to guarantee the data insertion, data deletion and verification with secure storage mechanism. The experiments were carried out using AWS small ec2 server cloud environment with various sizes of data to validate the claim of the proposed methodology without requiring any trusted third party. The algorithm is also validated by proving the security properties, efficiency, practicality, robustness of the proposed scheme.