Secure personal-health-records searching in edge-based Internet of Medical Things through plaintext checkable encryption

Abstract

The security of Personal Health Records (PHRs) within the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) infrastructure is a pressing issue in the healthcare sector. Edge-based IoMT devices like smart wearables and implantables often acquire PHRs. Cloud computing plays a vital role in handling computing and storage tasks for edge-based IoMT devices. However, concerns about trust with cloud servers require the use of encryption, which may complicate the retrieval of encrypted PHRs from the cloud. This paper presents certificateless public key encryption with plaintext-checkable encryption (CL-PKE-PCE). CL-PKE-PCE enables searching for encrypted data using plaintext keywords while eliminating key escrow and certificate management issues. The CL-PKE-PCE scheme facilitates the verification of ciphertexts against plaintexts without the need for decryption, thereby maintaining data privacy. Furthermore, the security of the proposed CL-PKE-PCE scheme has been substantiated under the bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption. Compared to similar work, it efficiently lowers calculation costs for encryption, decryption, and search algorithms by 63.66%, 51.17%, and 61.62%, respectively. The findings demonstrate that the CL-PKE-PCE is simultaneously secure and efficient, affirming its suitability for edge-based IoMT scenarios.