An Efficient, Secure, and Queryable Encryption for NoSQL-Based Databases Hosted on Untrusted Cloud Environments

Abstract

NoSQL-based databases are attractive to store and manage big data mainly due to high scalability and data modeling flexibility. However, security in NoSQL-based databases is weak which raises concerns for users. Specifically, security of data at rest is a high concern for the users deployed their NoSQL-based solutions on the cloud because unauthorized access to the servers will expose the data easily. There have been some efforts to enable encryption for data at rest for NoSQL databases. However, existing solutions do not support secure query processing, and data communication over the Internet and performance of the proposed solutions are also not good. In this article, the authors address NoSQL data at rest security concern by introducing a system which is capable to dynamically encrypt/decrypt data, support secure query processing, and seamlessly integrate with any NoSQL- based database. The proposed solution is based on a combination of chaotic encryption and Order Preserving Encryption (OPE). The experimental evaluation showed excellent results when integrated the solution with MongoDB and compared with the state-of-the-art existing work.