How to protect reader lending privacy under a cloud environment: a technical method

Abstract

PurposeIn this paper, the authors propose an effective mechanism for the protection of digital library readers' lending privacy under a cloud environment.Design/methodology/approachThe basic idea of the method is that for each literature circulation record, before being submitted to the untrusted cloud database of a digital library for storage, its reader number has to be encrypted strictly at a client, so as to make it unable for an attacker at the cloud to know the specific reader associated with each circulation record and thus protect readers' lending privacy. Moreover, the authors design an effective method for querying the encrypted literature circulation records, so as to ensure the accuracy and efficiency of each kind of database queries related to the encrypted reader number field of literature circulation records.FindingsFinally, both theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.Originality/valueThis paper presents the first study attempt to the privacy protection of readers' literature circulations, which can improve the security of readers' lending privacy in the untrusted cloud, without compromising the accuracy and efficiency of each kind of database queries in the digital library. It is of positive significance to construct a privacy-preserving digital library platform.