Abstract—Cloud computing has risen in the last decade to be the most aspired technology by the IT Industry. Cloud computing initially started as a technology for data outsourcing, later developed in to a newer computing platform for all IT related activities .The advent of cloud computing to deploy mission critical application has raised the value of cloud. On the contrary, cloud security is encountering infinite treats and vulnerabilities from several fronts. Security features like access control, digital signature, encryption and decryption are forced inside cloud environment to secure the cloud data. The paper surveys extensively all the varieties of the Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) access control techniques available to be used for cloud environments. Observations are made about the use of ABE and the ways access privileges are provided. The different ABE techniques are compared analyzed and recommendation for it to be used in deploying different cloud applications are mentioned.

Index Terms—attribute based encryption, access control, cloud security

Cite: Balamurugan B and Venkata Krishna P, "Extensive Survey on Usage of Attribute Based Encryption in Cloud," Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 263-272, August 2014. doi:10.4304/jetwi.6.3.263-272