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Enabling Secure Cloud Storage through Transparent Authentication
Abed L, Clarke NL, Ghita BV
Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference on ICT: Big Data, Cloud and Security (ICT-BDCS 2017), Singapore, 21st- 22nd August, pp 14-23, ISSN: 2251-2136, E-periodical: 2251-2144, 2017, 2017

Cloud storage has become a popular service for storing data; however, the security issues represent the critical argument. Significant attacks can be taken place, the most common being guessing the (poor) passwords which are used to access the stored data. The cloud storage paradigm is also regarded as less secure than local storage, where the latter benefits from logical and physical security countermeasures before being able to access data. Given weaknesses with verification credentials, further protection for the stored data is a key in providing mature security in reality. The typical practice today utilises third-party encryption tools to provide an additional user-oriented level of protection. Even if the files are accessed, they are cryptographically secured. However, this places a significant burden upon the user to manually encrypt/decrypt the files and manage the subsequent passwords used to reinforce the key generation. The field of biometric cryptography applies the biometric modalities within cryptography to produce a strong bio-crypto keys without forcing the user to remember them. There are, nonetheless, still specific flaws associated with the security of the resultant bio-crypto key and its usability. Users currently should present their biometric modals intrusively to encrypt or decrypt data in practice, and this clearly leads to cumbersome and inconvenient issues during a periodic usage. Transparent biometrics seeks to remove the intrusive need for authentication, and this eliminates the inconvenience for users. This paper proposes a novel bio-cryptosystem to maximise the security and usability aspects through the application of transparent authentication. The use of unobtrusive biometrics, however, introduces some unique challenges within bio-cryptography, in particular with regards to a more variable feature vector and the use of multibiometrics. An architectural system is proposed that focuses upon developing a usable, secure, flexible and multi-platform transparent and multimodal bio-cryptographic framework.

Abed L, Clarke NL, Ghita BV