MURI in Clear View of Secure Cloud Computing (Diversity) Published Sept. 14, 2010 By Maria Callier Office of Scientific Research ARLINGTON, Virginia -- With the help of Air Force Research Laboratory Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative funding, scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas are exploring solutions for maintaining privacy in Web-based computing environments known as clouds, wherein all necessary resources are offered on demand. Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham has assembled a team of researchers from the UTD School of Management and its School of Economics, Policy, and Political Sciences to investigate information sharing with respect to confidentiality and privacy in cloud computing. The interdisciplinary approach addresses the need for combining proper economic incentives with secure tools to achieve assured information sharing. Used increasingly to process large amounts of information, cloud computing is prompting substantial modifications to current technologies in order to uphold their respective utility within the environment while enhancing their contributions to overall system security. To achieve their project goals, the researchers are inserting new security programming directly into software programs to monitor and prevent intrusions. They have provided additional security by encrypting sensitive data that is not retrievable in its original form without accessing encryption keys. They are also using Chinese Wall, a set of policies that gives access to information based on previously viewed data. In addition, the scientists are using prototype systems that can store semantic Web data in an encrypted form and query it securely using a Web service that provides reliable capacity in the cloud. Further, they have introduced secure software and hardware attached to a database system that performs security functions. While assured information sharing in cloud computing is daunting, the team is creating a framework, along with related incentives, of merit to the Air Force, other branches of the military, and the private sector alike. The next step for Dr. Thuraisingham and her fellow researchers is to examine how their framework operates in practice. Accordingly, the team plans to conduct experiments using online social network applications in order to observe how various security and incentive measures affect information sharing. The MURI effort, which has quickly added an international dimension to its original scope, is now organizing a project-based collaborative comprising researchers from UTD; the University of London's King's College (Cambridge, England); and the University of Insubria (Varese, Italy) in order to develop strategies pertaining to secure query processing.