A Survey on Data Security in Network Storage Systems

Abstract

The development of mobile Internet produces massive data and causes rapid evolution and improvement of storage systems. The new generation of widely applied storage systems is represented by storage area networks, distributed storage systems, and cloud storage. Current development of network storage often pays much attention to performance and capacity improvement while ignoring system security. Consequently, data leakage frequently happened in the storage system in recent years. Therefore, as the main carrier of data, the security of the storage system must be taken into serious consideration. By investigating the existing literature, we find that there still lacks a comprehensive review of the data security in network area storage. To this end, we survey existing research on data security in storage systems and conduct a comprehensive evaluation of their security status. We propose a set of evaluation criteria including confidentiality, access control, integrity, availability, auditability, deduplication, scalability, and three types of cost. Through the assessment of existing works based on these criteria, we conclude the shortcomings of the current storage systems and point out several research directions for future research.