Storing sensitive data securely in a multi-cloud environment

Abstract

Using reversible coding (e.g., linear network coding) to encode and partition sensitive data before storing the different encoded partitions in a distributed manner among different public cloud providers' storage systems is disclosed. The sensitive data is normally encrypted when first received, whereby the initial security is increased via the use of linear network coding. To retrieve the data, the encoded data parts are collected from among the disparate storages, and reconstituted, including via inverse encoding for returning to a client request. A proxy re-encryption service can further be leveraged to re-encrypt the encrypted data before or after encoding into the partitions. Data protection and availability can be integrated with the system by maintaining multiple redundant (e.g., differently encoded) copies of the encoded parts and/or recovery fragments among the various public cloud providers' storage systems.