Attribute-based Encryption for Electronic Health Records in a Cloud Computing Environment

Abstract

Attributes have a major role to play in attribute-based encryption (ABE) scheme. For health records and cloud computing systems, attributes have the potential to significantly contribute to ensuring security, privacy and confidentiality of health data. This paper posits that ABE have the potential to enhance the security of health records in a cloud computing environment. The study seeks to find alternatives to improve the current state and use of some ABE schemes for health records and the cloud computing system. Attribute-based encryption schemes have the potential to minimise communication cost of the Internet, and also provide a fine-grained access control system for EHR in a cloud computing environment. In this paper, an analysis of ABE systems is discussed with their types (CP-ABE, KP-ABE, HABE and DABE) and suggestions are given for their improvement for EHR in a cloud computing environment.