A Multi-Key with Partially Homomorphic Encryption Scheme for Low-End Devices Ensuring Data Integrity †

In today’s hyperconnected world, the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing complement each other in several areas. Cloud Computing provides IoT systems with an efficient and flexible environment that supports application requirements such as real-time control/monitoring, scalability, fault tolerance, and numerous security services. Hardware and software limitations of IoT devices can be mitigated using the massive on-demand cloud resources. However, IoT cloud-based solutions pose some security and privacy concerns, specifically when an untrusted cloud is used. This calls for strong encryption schemes that allow operations on data in an encrypted format without compromising the encryption. This paper presents an asymmetric multi-key and partially homomorphic encryption scheme. The scheme provides the addition operation by encrypting each decimal digit of the given integer number separately using a special key. In addition, data integrity processes are performed when an untrusted third party performs homomorphic operations on encrypted data. The proposed work considers the most widely known issues like the encrypted data size, slow operations at the hardware level, and high computing costs at the provider level. The size of generated ciphertext is almost equal to the size of the plaintext, and order-preserving is ensured using an asymmetrical encryption version

A Flexible Encryption Technique for the Internet of Things Environment

IoT promises a new era of connectivity that goes beyond laptops and smart connected devices to connected vehicles, smart homes, smart cities and connected healthcare. The huge volume of data that is collected from millions of IoT devices raises information security and privacy concerns for users. This paper presents a new scalable encryption technique, called Flexible encryption Technique (FlexenTech), to protect IoT data during storage and in transit. FlexenTech is suitable for resource constrained devices and networks. It offers a low encryption time, defends against common attacks such as replay attacks and defines a configurable mode, where any number of rounds or key sizes may be used. Experimental analysis of FlexenTech shows its robustness in terms of its multiple configurable confidentiality levels by allowing various configurations. This configurability provides several advantages for resource constrained devices, including reducing the encryption computation time by up to 9.7% when compared to its best rivals in the literature