Author : Vijay Benjamin Lochan and Narender Kumar Gupta

Cloud computing is a relatively new business model in the computing world. Cloud-based outsourced storage relieves the client’s load for storage management and preservation by providing an equivalently scalable, low-cost, location-independent platform. Clients no longer have physical control of data indicates that they are facing a potentially frightening risk for missing or corrupted data. To keep away from the security risks, business model are significant to make sure that the integrity and availability of outsourced data. Enterprises usually store data in internal storage and install firewalls to protect against intruders to access the data. They also standardize data access procedures to prevent insiders to disclose the information without permission. Storing the data in encrypted form is a common method of information privacy protection. However the global nature of cloud brings about some challenges in security domain when physical control over our information in cloud is impossible. Thus, encrypting critical data becomes essential, and strongly advisable. The server-side encryption in an untrustworthy environment like public cloud is too risky. On the other hand, client-side encryption can undermine the benefits of cloud since it is a time-consuming task for encryption and decryption. This study proposes a business model for cloud computing based on the concept of separating the encryption and decryption service from the storage service in order to get rid of security risks. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) service is described in this paper as an example to illustrate the proposed business model.

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Data Integrity, Encryption, Decryption, CRM, business model, outsourcing, SLA

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.2 (April-2015)