Security and Privacy of User-Generated data for Personalized Cloud Computing Services

拟议的研究解决了个性化云计算服务背景下用户生成的私有数据内容的安全和隐私问题。作为全球趋势和加拿大IT基础设施的战略举措，云计算的新范式已经从一个流行语成熟为许多领先提供商采用的具体概念，如Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud/Simple Storage Service(EC2/S3)、Google AppEngine和Microsoft Mesh。通过将数据和计算从个人电脑转移到大型数据中心，云计算最终将允许计算作为一种公用事业提供，类似于水或电。基于云的服务将为个人用户提供按需容量、降低维护成本、提高可靠性、可扩展性和可访问性等优势。组织的其他优势包括能够动态更新基础设施元素、降低数据中心成本以及避免为每个新应用创建新平台。然而，缺乏安全保障以及由此产生的信任和隐私问题是更广泛地采用云计算提供的虚拟托管硬件和软件的最大障碍之一。云计算面临的最耐人寻味的安全问题之一在于，用户通常几乎无法控制自己的数据内容。事实上，用户在管理可能包含敏感个人信息的博客、社交资料、照片、视频片段等内容时，最关心的是他们的隐私。用户必须严重依赖云提供商来提供安全和隐私保护。拟议的项目旨在通过个性化云计算方法来保护用户生成的内容，从而消除上述障碍。具体而言，该目标包括两个相辅相成的方面。首先，我们的目标是让用户重新获得对自己内容的控制权。这将找回缺失的安全和隐私保障，因为用户不再需要完全依赖提供商提供保护。其次，我们的目标是将提供商从安全保护的可怕义务中解放出来，并使他们高兴地采用这一新模式。

The proposed research addresses the security and privacy of user-generated private data content in the context of personalized cloud computing services. As a global trend as well as a strategic move for Canada's IT infrastructure, the new paradigm of cloud computing has matured from a buzzword to a concrete concept adopted by many leading providers such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud/Simple Storage Service (EC2/S3), Google AppEngine, and Microsoft Mesh. By moving both data and computing away from personal computers into large data centers, cloud computing will eventually allow computation to be provided as a public utility, similar to water or electricity. Cloud-based services will provide personal users with advantages such as on-demand capacity, reduced maintenance cost, increased reliability, scalability, and accessibility. Additional advantages for organizations include the capability for dynamically updating infrastructure elements, mitigating the cost of data centers, and avoiding the need for creating new platforms for each new application. However, the lack of security guarantee and resultant trust and privacy issues are among the topmost barriers to a wider adoption of virtually hosted hardware and software provided by cloud computing. One of the most intriguing security issues facing cloud computing lies in the fact that users usually have little control over their own data content. Actually, users are most concerned about their privacy in managing content, such as blogs, social profiles, photos, video clips, etc., that may contain sensitive personal information. Users must heavily rely on cloud providers for security and privacy protection. The proposed project aims at removing the aforementioned obstacles through a personalized cloud computing approach to protecting user-generated content. Specifically, the objective encompasses two complementary aspects. First, we aim at allowing users to regain control over their own contents. This will bring back the missing security and privacy guarantee since users no longer need to solely rely on providers for protection. Second, we aim at freeing providers from the intimidating obligations of security protection and make them happy adopters of this new paradigm.