Abstract
Cloud Computing has been envisioned as the next-generation architecture of IT Enterprise. Secure and reliable communications have become critical in modern computing. The centralized services like e-mail and file sharing can be changed into distributed or collaborated system through multiple systems and networks. Basic cryptographic requirements such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication and access control are required to build secure collaborative system in the broadcast channel. For several groupware applications like voice & video conferences, distributed computation over the insecure network, developing an efficient group key agreement protocol for secure communication is required in internet. According to the recent rule released by Health and Human Services (HHS), healthcare data can be outsourced to cloud computing services for medical studies. The aim of this study is to provide the details about secure group data sharing protocols available and how it will be applicable in healthcare cloud applications to share data securely over healthcare cloud.