Privacy-by-Design Regulatory Compliance Automation in Cloud Environment

Abstract

The proposed Master's thesis revolves around the development of a privacy-preserving Attribute Verifier for regulatory compliance, first designed cryptographically, and then implemented in a Cloud Environment. The Attribute Verifier makes use of the Attribute Verification Protocol and its underlying encryption scheme, composed of Decentralized Attribute-Based Encryption (DABE) combined with a Zero- Knowledge Proof (ZKP) approach. The contribution of this work was integrating a ticketing system, concerning tickets of compliance, with the existing protocol, and automating the whole workflow, simulating all the actors involved, in AWS Cloud Environment. The major goal was to improve the security and privacy of sensitive data kept in the cloud as well as to comply with Cloud Regulatory, Standards, and different Data Protection Regulations. In particular, the use case covered in this Thesis refers to the General Protection Data Regulation (GDPR), specifically the compliance with Article 32. The word "Automation" in the title refers to the achievement of having automated in AWS Cloud Environment, through code, three main security objectives: Privacy, Identity and Access Management, and Attribute-based Access Control. A goal that was pursued because, in the majority of the cases, adherence to a Regulatory still requires heavy manual effort, especially when it's about pure Data Protection Regulations, i.e. in a legal setting. And when the manual effort is not required, confidentiality can be still heavily affected, and that's where the need for a privacy-by-design solution comes from. The Attribute Verifier was developed to verify the attributes of a Prover (e.g. a company, an institution, a healthcare provider, etc.) without revealing the actual attributes or assets and to grant access to encrypted data only if the verification is successful. The proposed example, among many applicable, it's the one a National Bank attempting to demonstrate to a Verifier, i.e. the European Central Bank, compliance with Article 32 of the GDPR.