Review of Blockchain Technology to Address Various Security Issues in Cloud Computing

Abstract

Being distributed in nature, Cloud is an in-use technology over the last decade where the data is stored on the Cloud service provider’s site where the data owner does not have direct access to the storage where her data is stored. This leads to severe security issues. Out of various such issues, data correctness or integrity is one of the major aspects of Cloud data storage security. Researchers have been exploring the options of using blockchain technology to address the data storage correctness concern in Cloud computing. Blockchain technology has provided a new dimension to address the traditional security issues in computing technologies, where every transaction is treated as an atomic operation, and once performed, it becomes immutable. The transactions are stored in a block, and such blocks are linked together to form a chain through a cryptographic hash code. Such chains are distributed in nature in the sense that there is no single central administrative authority to manage them, and any node in the network can verify the correctness of data or transaction. In this paper, we intend to make an exhaustive study on various alternatives to solve the data integrity issues in Cloud computing using blockchain technology. Being distributed, immutable, transparent, cost effective and efficient to use, blockchain is definitely a solution to many issues including Cloud data storage security problems.