Enhanced Cloud Storage Encryption Standard for Security in Distributed Environments

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Aiming at the security problem of shared data in cloud computing, this paper proposes a new cloud storage encryption framework. The evaluation results show that this method has good data sharing efficiency.

1. It is suggested that in related work, the author had better extract a few important indicators to indicate the focus and advantages and disadvantages of each work, rather than a list of words. In a comparison of proposed with existing work, only one existing scheme participates, It is suggested that relevant work can be more involved in comparison.

2. What is the motivation for new model? There are many models to ensure data integrity and user access control. What is the difference between the scenarios applicable to the proposed protocols?

3.  Privacy protection technology has been widely used in cloud storage, especially in group secret sharing technology. So it is necessary to cite and mention the latest secret sharing techniques, such as:  Verifiable Multi-Dimensional (t,n) Threshold Quantum Secret Sharing Based on Quantum Walk, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 61(2):1-17,2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-022-05009-w

Author Response

Reviewer#1, Concern #1: Aiming at the security problem of shared data in cloud computing, this paper proposes a new cloud storage encryption framework. The evaluation results show that this method has good data sharing efficiency.

Response We are extremely thankful to the esteemed reviewer for their understanding of the presented work. No major actions were performed.

Reviewer#1, Concern #2: It is suggested that in related work, the author had better extract a few important indicators to indicate the focus and advantages and disadvantages of each work, rather than a list of words. In a comparison of proposed with existing work, only one existing scheme participates, It is suggested that relevant work can be more involved in comparison.

Response The comparison is herewith done and the manuscript is updated with the suggested change in the Table 1 and highlighted.

Reviewer#1, Concern #3: What is the motivation for new model? There are many models to ensure data integrity and user access control. What is the difference between the scenarios applicable to the proposed protocols?

Response Due to security, the verifier cannot access the information and ensure its integrity. With the rise of cloud services, storage services are provided without human interaction. The possibility of data corruption exists due to hardware or software failure. Hence integrity of stored data applies RDPC schemes to generate an authentication tag for each block. The status of the data is verified by the correctness of the tag. In block updating, the regeneration of the tag is another challenge. Whereas the current scheme safeguard the integrity of the data and ensure user access.

Reviewer#1, Concern #4: Privacy protection technology has been widely used in cloud storage, especially in group secret sharing technology. So it is necessary to cite and mention the latest secret sharing techniques, such as:  Verifiable Multi-Dimensional (t,n) Threshold Quantum Secret Sharing Based on Quantum Walk, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 61(2):1-17,2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-022-05009-w

Response The manuscript is updated with the suggested change in the reference section and cited in the related work section and highlighted.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a solution to improve the integrity and access control of shared data auditing in the cloud using an enhanced storage retrieval mechanism and evaluates its performance based on the time taken to perform various tasks with files of different sizes and formats.

In the Intro, the definition provided for the "Enhanced CStorage Retrieval Mechanism (ECRM) as to improve the storage and retrieval mechanism for cloud users" is somehow not very meaningful and tautological. Please rephrase/comment so that the reader could grasp the meaning of such a mechanism in practical terms. 

There's a rather large part of the article, both in the Introduction and Sec. II, that refers to the state of the art and alternative techniques. However, only a single, theoretical comparison with respect to [5] is done in Table 2. Can you add comparison and apply the different algorithms to the very same test case of file up/download, etc.? 

How significant is the test case with different files size? Is there a recognized benchmark in the literature for this kind of algorithms?

Is the information reported in Table 1 the same as the one plotted in the Figs? If so, I'd delete the Table to avoid confusion. 

There is a (probably wrong) reference to Table 6, which doesn't exist.

Author Response

Reviewer#2, Concern #1:This paper presents a solution to improve the integrity and access control of shared data auditing in the cloud using an enhanced storage retrieval mechanism and evaluates its performance based on the time taken to perform various tasks with files of different sizes and formats.

Response We are extremely thankful to the esteemed reviewer for their understanding of the presented work. No major actions were performed.

Reviewer#2, Concern #2:In the Intro, the definition provided for the "Enhanced CStorage Retrieval Mechanism (ECRM) as to improve the storage and retrieval mechanism for cloud users" is somehow not very meaningful and tautological. Please rephrase/comment so that the reader could grasp the meaning of such a mechanism in practical terms. 

Response The name in the introduction section is changed and the manuscript is updated with the suggested change and highlighted.

Reviewer#2, Concern #3: There's a rather large part of the article, both in the Introduction and Sec. II, that refers to the state of the art and alternative techniques. However, only a single, theoretical comparison with respect to [5] is done in Table 2. Can you add comparison and apply the different algorithms to the very same test case of file up/download, etc.? 

Response The comparison is herewith done and the manuscript is updated with the suggested change in the Table 1 and highlighted.

Reviewer#2, Concern #4: How significant is the test case with different files size? Is there a recognized benchmark in the literature for this kind of algorithms?

Response Yes the work presented by He et al. (2018) is considered as the benchmark for the proposed work. The existing work is cited in the literature and is herewith highlighted. Also, in the case of file sizes they are significant. This is because the encryption scheme construction support variable sized blocks and reduce the server’s computation overhead is a more reasonable choice. The sizes are different when updating the randomized data blocks. As the number of update blocks increases, our scheme reduces the communication costs between the client and server significantly.

Reviewer#2, Concern #5: Is the information reported in Table 1 the same as the one plotted in the Figs? If so, I'd delete the Table to avoid confusion. 

Response Yes. Table 1 is herewith removed and the manuscript is updated. The changes are herewith highlighted.

Reviewer#2, Concern #6: There is a (probably wrong) reference to Table 6, which doesn't exist.

Response The manuscript is updated with the suggested change; the Table 6 in the result section is replaced by Table 1 and highlighted.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors' efforts for improving the paper are sincerely appreciated. The paper is improved after the revisions. I have no additional comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no additional comments.