Public Funding for Cloudtomo Limited

CloudFortress aims to bring the benefits of high security assurance technologies such as Trusted Platform and big data analytics capabilities such as Hadoop into a single secure solution. It addresses the problem that inhibits the adoption of Cloud, namely the protection of sensitive customer data. Cloud offers an attractive way for Enterprises and their suppliers to control IT costs and as a means to store their ever-growing mountains of data that are recorded for security and regulatory purposes. This growing data repository presents opportunities to extract exploitable information for business and security. The CloudFortress project will develop the security infrastructure that enables the secure exploitation of data held by an Enterprise within the Cloud. If successful, the project should benefit diverse sectors such as finance, pharmaceutical, security and business intelligence analysis.

Cloud computing provides ubiquitous and easy access to data and information for businesses, but it is difficult for individuals and SME organisations embrace mobile working without compromising their security and privacy. Our study investigates the feasibility of designing a small-form-factor device to enhance security and privacy. Located on user's premises, the device will seamlessly encrypt files and other text before sending them to the cloud. Computations on the device will permit content search, indexing, sharing, and messaging, which are often difficult to achieve with encrypted cloud data. We have patent-pending technology which will form the basis of the device, subject to the feasibility study. This will enable SMEs and individual users to use the public cloud without having to trust the cloud provider with confidentiality of the data. The core idea of our project is to investigate commercial and technical objectives for the design of software which provides simple ways for users to increase confidence in cloud-based systems, specifically around the reliability, security, privacy and atomicity of their data and operations.