A Novel Three-Layered Security Framework for Enhancing Data Confidentiality in Cloud Storage Environments
TL;DR
The proposed three-layer framework is the first to combine word-level alphanumeric obfuscation, matrix scrambling and XOR masking into a single seed/key pipeline evaluated jointly on security, latency and storage cost, rather than treating obfuscation and encryption as separate design problems.
Abstract
Objectives: Cloud data confidentiality is conventionally achieved by increasing the computational strength of a single encryption algorithm, which raises processing time and ciphertext size in proportion to security level. This study aims to achieve high confidentiality with low computational and storage overhead by decoupling security strength from a single heavy cipher and instead distributing protection across three lightweight, sequential transformations. Method: A three-layer framework is proposed, combining Word-based Magic Rectangle Alphanumeric Data Obfuscation (WMRADO), deterministic matrix-based scrambling, and single-key binary XOR encryption. Plaintext is first converted into a compressed alphanumeric code using a seed-driven 8×8 substitution square, then structurally disordered through positional matrix scrambling, and finally masked with a bitwise XOR operation before upload. The framework was implemented in Java (JDK 8) on an Intel Core i7-8700K workstation with 16 GB DDR4 RAM running Windows 10, and benchmarked against DES, AES, AES-Blowfish and AES-RSA using four plaintext sizes (112 B, 2,305 B, 7,894 B and 153,422 B) across ciphertext size, encryption time, decryption time and projected Google Cloud Storage cost. Findings: The proposed framework produced ciphertext 3–18 times smaller than DES/AES and up to 99.97% smaller than AES-RSA at the largest tested size (43 bytes versus 168,302 bytes). Encryption time was reduced by 9.5–52.0% relative to DES/AES and by up to 77.4% relative to AES-RSA, while decryption time was reduced by 3.0% relative to DES/AES and by up to 97.9% relative to AES-Blowfish/AES-RSA at large data sizes. Projected monthly storage cost fell by 99.5–99.8% relative to unencrypted storage and remained below both MRADO- and Moncrypt-obfuscated baselines at every tested file size. Novelty: The framework is the first to combine word-level alphanumeric obfuscation, matrix scrambling and XOR masking into a single seed/key pipeline evaluated jointly on security, latency and storage cost, rather than treating obfuscation and encryption, or security and efficiency, as separate design problems. Keywords: cloud computing, cloud storage security, data confidentiality, data obfuscation, layered encryption, WMRADO, matrix scrambling, XOR encryption