Secure Cryptographic Deletion in the Swift Object Store

Abstract

The secure deletion of data is of increasing importance to individuals, corporations as well as governments. Recent data breaches as well as advances in laws and regulations show that secure deletion is becoming a requirement in many areas. However, this requirement is rarely considered in today’s cloud storage services. The reason is that the established processes for secure deletion of on-site storage are not applicable to cloud storage services. Cryptographic deletion is a suitable candidate for these services, but a research gap still exists in applying cryptographic deletion to large cloud storage services. For these reasons, we demonstrate a working prototype for a secure-deletion enabled cloud storage service with the following two main contributions: A model for offering high value service without full plain-text access to the provider, as well as secure deletion of data through cryptography.