Secure Storage and Processing of Confidential Data on Public Clouds

The goal of this paper is to describe problems associated with storage and processing of confidential data in public clouds, and to propose relevant mitigation strategies. In our opinion many types of data in the commercial and scientific worlds require special attention to protect them against possible mishandling. This issue affects highly valuable data, such as trade secrets and financial information, as well as personal data including medical records used in scientific research. We analyse situations which require special care and next we propose a set of solutions for ensuring data security and describe feasibility studies based on tests performed using popular cryptographic software (OpenSSL). Those solutions would allow to fullfil objectives of the paper which are to analyze the requirements of scientific software regarding protection of confidential data, the nature of the data itself and threats against those assets.