Decentralized blockchain-based security enhancement with lamport merkle digital signature generation and optimized encryption in cloud environment.

Nowadays, data storage in a cloud environment plays an important role in managing large scale information. However, the main problem with using a cloud environment is data security. Various encryption approaches are introduced in the existing works to provide security. However, the security issues are not resolved. This paper presented a good security enhancement with decentralized blockchain and enhanced encryption approaches. Initially, the Lamport Merkle Digital Signature Generation based blockchain approach was developed to authenticate the user data to prevent unauthorized access. This presented approach authenticates cloud users by constructing a tree, in which the leaves symbolize the hash function of sensitive user data. Then in the encryption phase, the original data is encrypted as ciphertext utilizing Optimized Elliptic curve cryptography. Here, the Collective Decision optimization approach is utilized for optimal key selection. Furthermore, the selected optimal secret key is exchanged securely utilizing the Improved Diffie-Hellman approach. The presented blockchain-based security scheme enhances data security and ensures confidential data sharing between users. The experimental results of the presented approach are examined in terms of different performance metrics. The performance analysis of the presented approach outperforms the different existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]