Attribute-based keyword search encryption for power data protection

To protect the privacy of power data, we usually encrypt data before outsourcing it to the cloud servers. However, it is challenging to search over the encrypted data. In addition, we need to ensure that only authorized users can retrieve the power data. The attribute-based searchable encryption is an advanced technology to solve these problems. However, many existing schemes do not support large universe, expressive access policies, and hidden access policies. In this paper, we propose an attribute-based keyword search encryption scheme for power data protection. Firstly, our proposed scheme can support encrypted data retrieval and achieve fine-grained access control. Only authorized users whose attributes satisfy the access policies can search and decrypt the encrypted data. Secondly, to satisfy the requirement in the power grid environment, the proposed scheme can support large attribute universe and hidden access policies. The access policy in this scheme does not leak private information about users. Thirdly, the security analysis and performance analysis indicate that our scheme is efficient and practical. Furthermore, the comparisons with other schemes demonstrate the advantages of our proposed scheme.