Key management infrastructure in cloud computing environment-a survey

The term cryptography which means “secret writing”, has become the foundation primitive in providing security for many communication applications. In many applications, particularly in group communication, there is a need to hide secret data like passwords, encryption key, recipes etc. Here efficient key management protocols are required to provide security for group's secret data. Because it is very challenging to provide security for group's secret data, especially in two scenarios: when the number of group members more and when the group members are present in different locations with diverse mechanisms of protection. The cloud computing where application services are provided through the internet. Cloud computing is a flexible, cost-effective, and proven delivery platform for providing business or consumer IT services over the internet. The cloud computing not only provides additional computing resources, but also network infrastructure which supports group communication scenarios. To interact with various services in the cloud and to store the data generated/processed by those services, several security mechanisms are required. In this context, this paper investigates the basic problem of cloud computing key management and enabling support for interoperability between cloud cryptographic clients and cloud key management servers. Cloud key management includes its creation and its subsequent adoption to reduce the complexity of encryption key management, infrastructure costs and risks and also to enhance the performance of both private and public storage cloud is discussed. This paper deals with the elaborate survey of existing key management techniques in cloud computing security and there by exploring the possible solution for cloud computing security.