Middleware for Preserving Privacy in Big Data

Introduction

Cloud computing paradigm amends the way information is processed and managed, especially when personal data processing is concerned. Cloud Computing is “a large-scale distributed computing paradigm that is driven by economies of scale, in which a pool of abstracted, virtualized, dynamically-scalable, managed computing power, storage, platforms, and services are delivered on demand to external customers over the Internet.” The key characteristics of cloud computing is that the end-users can access cloud services anytime and anywhere without the need for any expert knowledge of the underlying technology, and this offers the benefit of reduction in cost as computing and storage resources are shared among multiple end-users. The services are provided on-demand based on pay-per-use business model. These new features have a direct impact on the IT budget and cost of ownership, but also bring up issues of traditional security, trust and privacy mechanisms.

Cloud computing offers three kinds of services to end-users i.e. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). IaaS is the delivery of computing infrastructure as a service on-demand. Infrastructure can be storage servers, applications, operating systems or any other computing resource. IaaS reduces cost as the set up and maintenance of the infrastructure is taken care of by the providers. Users pay for what they use and also help users achieve faster delivery time and service to market. Examples include Amazon Web Service, Flexiscale, OpenNebula, Nimbus, Enomaly (Bhaskar et al., 2009). PaaS provides a complete development environment where developers can develop, test, deploy or host their applications on the cloud. PaaS reduces the development time. Examples include Microsoft’s Azure, Google App Engine (Bhaskar et al., 2009). SaaS provides software as a service that can be configured to suit the specific needs of the users. Example SalesForce.com (Bhaskar et al., 2009).

Clouds can be deployed in four different modes namely private cloud, community cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. In a private cloud, the cloud infrastructure is used and managed within the organization thereby achieving high security. A community cloud is formed by a group of organizations that have similar requirements. With public cloud, the cloud infrastructure is made available to the public where resources can be dynamically accessed based on the requirements. A combination of two or more clouds (private, community, public) is termed as a hybrid cloud.

A huge volume of data is being generated from different sources like social networks, CRM, health care applications, sensors that collect climate information, cell phone GPS signals, etc. The size of the sensitive data that is generated thus grows exponentially and it is termed as Big Data. In general, big data refer to “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.”

The aggregation and analysis of such large volumes of data can be used to map disease outbreaks, reduce frauds, improve business processes and assist in creating new innovative and wanted products. Such analysis might enable an organization to gain an insight about its customers and the market, so as to improve their businesses. However, there is also a dark side of Big Data, especially with privacy.