Protecting software design in cloud using AWS IoT

Abstract

Emerging technologies like Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing, IoT, AI, etc. are gaining momentum in the IT community. These novel technologies have changed the way to design secure and expert IT Systems for the future. Over the last decade scripting languages like PHP, Python, etc. are being used to develop applications due to ease of product development with moderate IT skills. Software design is not well protected for scripting languages due to the absence of source code translation. This risk is multifold if the IT System is deployed in a public cloud. The IoT Cloud services like AWS IoT may be used to redesign the security of IT Sytems by incorporating cost-effective and powerful IoT Computers like Raspberry Pi. We are proposing here a solution to protect software design by decoupling application code design and database design using hashing for database-name, table-name, and attribute-name of the application database. Security keys used in hashing are stored on a credit card size IoT Computer on business premises. IoT computer uses a separate AWS IoT secure channel to share the security keys on-demand in the cloud IT System when user logged in and keys are saved in session variable only. This proposal may be considered as adding client-trusted hardware into the public cloud.