An iterative hierarchical key exchange scheme for secure scheduling of big data applications in cloud computing

As the new-generation distributed computing platform, cloud computing environments offer high efficiency and low cost for data-intensive computation in big data applications. Cloud resources and services are available in pay-as-you-go mode, which brings extraordinary flexibility and cost-effectiveness as well as zero investment in their own computing infrastructure. However, these advantages come at a price people no longer have direct control over their own data. Based on this view, data security becomes a major concern in the adoption of cloud computing. Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE) is essential to a security system that is based on high efficiency symmetric-key encryption. With virtualization technology being applied, existing key exchange schemes such as Internet Key Exchange (IKE) becomes time-consuming when directly deployed into cloud computing environment. In this paper we propose a novel hierarchical key exchange scheme, namely Cloud Background Hierarchical Key Exchange (CBHKE). Based on our previous work, CBHKE aims at providing secure and efficient scheduling for cloud computing environment. In our new scheme, we design a two-phase layer-by-layer iterative key exchange strategy to achieve more efficient AKE without sacrificing the level of data security. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that when deployed in cloud computing environment, efficiency of the proposed scheme is dramatically superior to its predecessors CCBKE and IKE schemes.