BackgroundTechniques have been developed to compute statistics on distributed datasets without revealing private information except the statistical results. However, duplicate records in a distributed dataset may lead to incorrect statistical results. Therefore, to increase the accuracy of the statistical analysis of a distributed dataset, secure deduplication is an important preprocessing step.MethodsWe designed a secure protocol for the deduplication of horizontally partitioned datasets with deterministic record linkage algorithms. We provided a formal security analysis of the protocol in the presence of semi-honest adversaries. The protocol was implemented and deployed across three microbiology laboratories located in Norway, and we ran experiments on the datasets in which the number of records for each laboratory varied. Experiments were also performed on simulated microbiology datasets and data custodians connected through a local area network.ResultsThe security analysis demonstrated that the protocol protects the privacy of individuals and data custodians under a semi-honest adversarial model. More precisely, the protocol remains secure with the collusion of up to N − 2 corrupt data custodians. The total runtime for the protocol scales linearly with the addition of data custodians and records. One million simulated records distributed across 20 data custodians were deduplicated within 45 s. The experimental results showed that the protocol is more efficient and scalable than previous protocols for the same problem.ConclusionsThe proposed deduplication protocol is efficient and scalable for practical uses while protecting the privacy of patients and data custodians.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12911-016-0389-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In this paper, we describe a decentralized privacy-preserving protocol for securely casting trust ratings in distributed reputation systems. Our protocol allows n participants to cast their votes in a way that preserves the privacy of individual values against both internal and external attacks. The protocol is coupled with an extensive theoretical analysis in which we formally prove that our protocol is resistant to collusion against as many as n − 1 corrupted nodes in both the semi-honest and malicious adversarial models.The behavior of our protocol is tested in a real P2P network by measuring its communication delay and processing overhead. The experimental results uncover the advantages of our protocol over previous works in the area; without sacrificing security, our decentralized protocol is shown to be almost one order of magnitude faster than the previous best protocol for providing anonymous feedback.

obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners.Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/).In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail repository@westminster.ac.uk Abstract-The infrastructure cloud (IaaS) service model offers improved resource flexibility and availability, where tenants -insulated from the minutiae of hardware maintenance -rent computing resources to deploy and operate complex systems. Large-scale services running on IaaS platforms demonstrate the viability of this model; nevertheless, many organizations operating on sensitive data avoid migrating operations to IaaS platforms due to security concerns. In this paper, we describe a framework for data and operation security in IaaS, consisting of protocols for a trusted launch of virtual machines and domain-based storage protection. We continue with an extensive theoretical analysis with proofs about protocol resistance against attacks in the defined threat model. The protocols allow trust to be established by remotely attesting host platform configuration prior to launching guest virtual machines and ensure confidentiality of data in remote storage, with encryption keys maintained outside of the IaaS domain. Presented experimental results demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed protocols. The framework prototype was implemented on a test bed operating a public electronic health record system, showing that the proposed protocols can be integrated into existing cloud environments.

While cloud computing has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the potential efficiency and cost savings of outsourcing the storage and management of data and applications, a number of vulnerabilities that led to multiple attacks have deterred many potential users.As a result, experts in the field argued that new mechanisms are needed in order to create trusted and secure cloud services. Such mechanisms would eradicate the suspicion of users towards cloud computing by providing the necessary security guarantees. Searchable Encryption is among the most promising solutions -one that has the potential to help offer truly secure and privacypreserving cloud services. We start this paper by surveying the most important searchable encryption schemes and their relevance to cloud computing. In light of this analysis we demonstrate the inefficiencies of the existing schemes and expand our analysis by discussing certain confidentiality and privacy issues. Further, we examine how to integrate such a scheme with a popular cloud platform. Finally, we have chosen -based on the findings of our analysis -an * Corresponding Author. Preprint submitted to Computer Science Review JournalAugust 14, 2017 existing scheme and implemented it to review its practical maturity for deployment in real systems. The survey of the field, together with the analysis and with the extensive experimental results provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical and practical aspects of searchable encryption.

Abstract-Electronic devices we use on a daily basis collect sensitive information without preserving user's privacy. In this paper, we propose the lord of the sense (LotS), a privacy preserving reputation system for participatory sensing applications. Our system maintains the privacy and anonymity of information with the use of cryptographic techniques and combines voting approaches to support users' reputation. Furthermore, LotS maintains accountability by tracing back a misbehaving user while maintaining k-anonymity. A detailed security analysis is presented with the current advantages and disadvantages of our system.