The Effect of Data Transmission and Storage Security Between Device–Cloudlet Communication

Abstract

With the popularity of mobile cloud computing and edge computing, the deployment of cloudlet technology in these modern computing paradigms has been affected by security issues. A cloudlet helps mobile devices in accessing the cloud by enhancing the processing time, lowering latency, and enabling better service time but it does not provide enough security assurance to its consumers. However, several studies have been conducted in this field and most of the proposed models mainly focus on either data transmission or data storage between the communication of mobile devices and cloudlets. In this study, we proposed a security model which addresses both transmission and storage of data, by protecting the information that is shared between the mobile devices and the cloudlet resources which is invariably linked to the cloud. The study considered two scenarios for the security model: Three-tier architecture and a Three-tier enhanced with Edge Orchestrator (EO) architecture. The security model used an encryption algorithm called hybrid cryptosystem to provide an efficient security solution which secures transmission and storage of data by addressing three security parameters: confidentiality, data integrity, and non-repudiation. EdgeCloudSim was used to implement and evaluate the proposed security model. The results obtained showed that the proposed security model between mobile devices and cloudlets communication performs better in Three-tier enhanced with EO architecture when considering security and performance metrics such as processing time, service time, and network delay.