Secure, Efficient and Dynamic Data Search using Searchable Symmetric Encryption

Fog computing, which works complementary to cloud computing, is being developed to overcome the issue of cloud computing such as latency in the cases where the data is to be retrieved immediately. But, along with solving the problem of latency, fog computing brings along with it different set of security issues than cloud computing. The storage and processing capabilities of fog computing is limited and hence, the security issues must be solved with these constrained resources. One of the problems faced when the data is stored outside the internal network is loss of confidentiality. For this, the data must be encrypted. But, whenever document needs to be searched, all the related documents must be decrypted first and later the required document is to be fetched. Within this time frame, the document data can be accessed by an unauthorized person. So, in this paper, a searchable symmetric encryption scheme is proposed wherein the authorized members of an organization can search over the encrypted data and retrieve the required document in order to preserve the security and privacy of the data. Also, the searching complexity of the algorithm is much less so that it suitable to fog computing environment.