Cloud computing from a privacy perspective

The cloud could simplifies the everyday life of private individuals as well as big enterprises by renting out recourses. Resources such as storage capacity, computational power or cloud-based applications could be accessed without the need to invest in expensive infrastructure. Even though many enterprises could benefit from using cloud services they hesitate, partly because they fear data leakage when storing sensitive data in the cloud environment.The goal has been to prevent unauthorized users to access the users’ data by using client-side encryption. The solution must be able to support existing features. For example many applications support multiple devices, which means that the user can access the same data from devices such as Smartphone, Tablets and desktop computers.The result showed that there are two main approaches to implement clientside encryption. The first approach bases the encryption key on random elements. It’s without a doubt the most secure method to use, but it’s not user-friendly. The user has to distribute the generated encryption key between all the devices, for example moving files back and forth. The second approach bases the encryption key on a password. The security will decrease but it will be more user friendly.It appears that the biggest problem related to client-side encryption, isn’t the encryption itself, but the distribution of encryption keys. As the number of users increase, the key destitution problem gets more distinct. Often the key distribution is handled by something called a key manager, which could operate at different levels. It could be built into the application or it could be an external application. There are organizations which made guild lines for how to design key management systems