Systematizing Genome Privacy Research: A Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Perspective

Rapid advances in human genomics are enabling researchers to gain a better understanding of the role of the genome in our health and well-being, stimulating hope for more effective and cost efficient healthcare. However, this also prompts a number of security and privacy concerns stemming from the distinctive characteristics of genomic data. To address them, a new research community has emerged and produced a large number of publications and initiatives. In this paper, we rely on a structured methodology to contextualize and provide a critical analysis of the current knowledge on privacy-enhancing technologies used for testing, storing, and sharing genomic data, using a representative sample of the work published in the past decade. We identify and discuss limitations, technical challenges, and issues faced by the community, focusing in particular on those that are inherently tied to the nature of the problem and are harder for the community alone to address. Finally, we report on the importance and difficulty of the identified challenges based on an online survey of genome data privacy expertsComment: To appear in the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs), Vol. 2019, Issue

An efficient PHR service system supporting fuzzy keyword search and fine-grained access control

Outsourcing of personal health record (PHR) has attracted considerable interest recently. It can not only bring much convenience to patients, it also allows efficient sharing of medical information among researchers. As the medical data in PHR is sensitive, it has to be encrypted before outsourcing. To achieve fine-grained access control over the encrypted PHR data becomes a challenging problem. In this paper, we provide an affirmative solution to this problem. We propose a novel PHR service system which supports efficient searching and fine-grained access control for PHR data in a hybrid cloud environment, where a private cloud is used to assist the user to interact with the public cloud for processing PHR data. In our proposed solution, we make use of attribute-based encryption (ABE) technique to obtain fine-grained access control for PHR data. In order to protect the privacy of PHR owners, our ABE is anonymous. That is, it can hide the access policy information in ciphertexts. Meanwhile, our solution can also allow efficient fuzzy search over PHR data, which can greatly improve the system usability. We also provide security analysis to show that the proposed solution is secure and privacy-preserving. The experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Privacy in the Genomic Era

Genome sequencing technology has advanced at a rapid pace and it is now possible to generate highly-detailed genotypes inexpensively. The collection and analysis of such data has the potential to support various applications, including personalized medical services. While the benefits of the genomics revolution are trumpeted by the biomedical community, the increased availability of such data has major implications for personal privacy; notably because the genome has certain essential features, which include (but are not limited to) (i) an association with traits and certain diseases, (ii) identification capability (e.g., forensics), and (iii) revelation of family relationships. Moreover, direct-to-consumer DNA testing increases the likelihood that genome data will be made available in less regulated environments, such as the Internet and for-profit companies. The problem of genome data privacy thus resides at the crossroads of computer science, medicine, and public policy. While the computer scientists have addressed data privacy for various data types, there has been less attention dedicated to genomic data. Thus, the goal of this paper is to provide a systematization of knowledge for the computer science community. In doing so, we address some of the (sometimes erroneous) beliefs of this field and we report on a survey we conducted about genome data privacy with biomedical specialists. Then, after characterizing the genome privacy problem, we review the state-of-the-art regarding privacy attacks on genomic data and strategies for mitigating such attacks, as well as contextualizing these attacks from the perspective of medicine and public policy. This paper concludes with an enumeration of the challenges for genome data privacy and presents a framework to systematize the analysis of threats and the design of countermeasures as the field moves forward

State of The Art and Hot Aspects in Cloud Data Storage Security

Along with the evolution of cloud computing and cloud storage towards matu- rity, researchers have analyzed an increasing range of cloud computing security aspects, data security being an important topic in this area. In this paper, we examine the state of the art in cloud storage security through an overview of selected peer reviewed publications. We address the question of defining cloud storage security and its different aspects, as well as enumerate the main vec- tors of attack on cloud storage. The reviewed papers present techniques for key management and controlled disclosure of encrypted data in cloud storage, while novel ideas regarding secure operations on encrypted data and methods for pro- tection of data in fully virtualized environments provide a glimpse of the toolbox available for securing cloud storage. Finally, new challenges such as emergent government regulation call for solutions to problems that did not receive enough attention in earlier stages of cloud computing, such as for example geographical location of data. The methods presented in the papers selected for this review represent only a small fraction of the wide research effort within cloud storage security. Nevertheless, they serve as an indication of the diversity of problems that are being addressed

Survey on securing data storage in the cloud

Cloud Computing has become a well-known primitive nowadays; many researchers and companies are embracing this fascinating technology with feverish haste. In the meantime, security and privacy challenges are brought forward while the number of cloud storage user increases expeditiously. In this work, we conduct an in-depth survey on recent research activities of cloud storage security in association with cloud computing. After an overview of the cloud storage system and its security problem, we focus on the key security requirement triad, i.e., data integrity, data confidentiality, and availability. For each of the three security objectives, we discuss the new unique challenges faced by the cloud storage services, summarize key issues discussed in the current literature, examine, and compare the existing and emerging approaches proposed to meet those new challenges, and point out possible extensions and futuristic research opportunities. The goal of our paper is to provide a state-of-the-art knowledge to new researchers who would like to join this exciting new field

Droplet: Decentralized Authorization for IoT Data Streams

This paper presents Droplet, a decentralized data access control service, which operates without intermediate trust entities. Droplet enables data owners to securely and selectively share their encrypted data while guaranteeing data confidentiality against unauthorized parties. Droplet's contribution lies in coupling two key ideas: (i) a new cryptographically-enforced access control scheme for encrypted data streams that enables users to define fine-grained stream-specific access policies, and (ii) a decentralized authorization service that handles user-defined access policies. In this paper, we present Droplet's design, the reference implementation of Droplet, and experimental results of three case-study apps atop of Droplet: Fitbit activity tracker, Ava health tracker, and ECOviz smart meter dashboard