Design of a Secure Encryption Model (SEM) for Cloud Data Storage Using Hadamard Transforms

Data storage has been one of the most prevalent services that has been offered by cloud computing. One of the challenges associated with data storage has been the security of the users data. There have been many models proposed that have tried to secure the users data using various cryptographic techniques. These models provide security at the cost of system overhead and increased computational complexity in terms of time and space. This paper presents a model—the Secure Encryption Model (SEM), that conserves space, reduces the computation cost and secures the users data using discrete transformations, termed as Hadamard transforms. The SEM model presented is a flexible model that encrypts the data at multiple levels, starting from a secure user authentication, which increases the security substantially. The SEM satisfies the avalanche effect property, which is a desirable property of an encryption algorithm. The storage space required for storing the encrypted data using Hadamard transforms is less by 10%, when compared to the ECC algorithm. The execution time for encrypting the data by Hadamard transforms has also been reduced by 25% when compared to the ECC algorithm. The model can be used in scenarios where the security requirements are not high and can be traded off with complexity, space and execution time.