Abstract Cloud computing is one of the most cutting-edge technologies around the world that plays a major role in IT industries and personal use. Several sectors are showing efforts in adopting cloud computing to their services, considering the provided cost reduction and process efficiency. However, outsourcing users’ sensitive data increases the concerns regarding the security, privacy and integrity of stored data. Therefore, there is a need to build a trusting relationship between users and cloud systems. Hence, in this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving framework, called Hybrid and Secure Data Sharing Architecture (HSDSA), for secure data storage in cloud systems. The basic idea of HSDSA is to improve data security in a multi-cloud environment using a combination of cryptography techniques. These techniques ensure that the user has total control over the data generation and management of the decryption without relying on a trusted authority. HSDSA provides removal of centralized file storage distribution and ensures data integrity in the recovery process. We evaluate our contribution under Cloudera, and the results demonstrate the efficiency of HSDSA compared with the existing system.