DESIGN OF SECURE AUTHENTICATED KEY MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL FOR CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

The rapid adoption of cloud computing has significantly transformed the way data is stored, processed, and accessed, offering scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency. However, this shift has also introduced critical security challenges, particularly in the areas of user authentication and cryptographic key management. Ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive data in multiserver cloud environments requires robust and efficient security mechanisms.This project proposes a secure authenticated key management protocol designed specifically for cloud computing environments. The protocol is based on a three-factor authentication mechanism that integrates password, device, and biometric verification to enhance security. It employs advanced cryptographic techniques such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) for secure key exchange, Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for authentication, and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for data encryption. These techniques ensure secure key generation, distribution, storage, and revocation while maintaining efficient performance. The proposed system introduces a dynamic revocation mechanism and utilizes Schnorr signature-based verification to enable secure user management and prevent unauthorized access. It also provides mutual authentication between users and cloud servers, thereby mitigating common security threats such as impersonation attacks, replay attacks, and man-in-themiddle attacks. Additionally, the protocol is designed to be lightweight, making it suitable for resource-constrained devices and large-scale multi-server environments. Security and performance analyses demonstrate that the proposed protocol achieves strong protection against various cyber threats while maintaining low computational and communication overhead. Simulation results validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the system in real-world scenarios. Overall, this work contributes a reliable, scalable, and secure solution for key management in cloud computing, addressing the limitations of existing authentication protocols and enhancing trust in cloud-based systems.