Enhancing cloud storage security through blockchain-integrated access control and optimized cryptographic techniques

In the ever-changing landscape of technological innovation and the growing security concerns associated with cloud storage, this research focuses on the critical topic of improving cloud record security. The study introduces a paradigm for access control that integrates with the Ethereum blockchain. To enhance security, an improved salp swarm optimization (ISSO) technique is employed to generate the crucial random numbers required for secret key generation. Additionally, the research utilizes two more encryption algorithms: the Paillier federated multi-layer perceptron (PF-MLP) model and the homomorphic encryption standard (HES), to further protect the original health tweet dataset's privacy. The study evaluates the security constraints and efficacy of various encryption methods, guiding the selection of the strongest framework to safeguard the health tweets dataset. The ISSO technique streamlines key pair generation, making it more challenging for potential attackers to access the original data. The proposed encryption-decryption method demonstrates superior speed, with encryption times of 800 ms and 900 ms, respectively, outperforming both the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithm and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Additionally, the approach surpasses ECC and RSA in upload and download speeds, with times of 4 ms and 6 ms, respectively. With a processing time of 1500 ms, the proposed method significantly outperforms previous approaches, showcasing its efficiency and superiority in cryptographic operations. This work combines access control, blockchain technology, and advanced cryptographic techniques to address pressing security issues related to cloud storage. By enhancing data safety and confidentiality, the integrated framework represents a significant advancement in the security of data outsourced to cloud platforms.