The changing face of healthcare due to integration of the cloud into e-health systems allows for storage, sharing and access to data in a highly secure manner, but this also raises questions about security and privacy issues. In this research paper, the authors address one such privacy and security concern, which is data confidentiality and loss of integrity within the e-health systems based on Cloud Computing. The paper explores several vulnerabilities, such as unauthorized access to sensitive information, data theft, and system errors that threaten sensitive health data’s confidentiality and accuracy. Furthermore, the authors address how cloud computing can assist in reducing these threats, which include encryption, access control mechanisms, and privacy protection mechanisms. The findings of the study demonstrate how cloud computing improves the security of patient’s data, focusing on security challenges associated with modern e-health systems solutions. The final chapter proposes ways in which healthcare professionals, policymakers, and technology developers can improve the legal protection of patients and units within organizations for effective implementation of e-health systems.

Keywords: Cloud computing, data confidentiality, E-health systems, privacy protection, security mechanisms

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1. Zhang R, Liu L. Security models and requirements for healthcare application clouds. In 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on cloud Computing. 2010 Jul 5. pp. 268–275. IEEE.
2. Abbas A, Bilal K, Zhang L, Khan SU. A cloud-based health insurance plan recommendation system: A user centered approach. Future Generation Computer Systems. 2015 Feb 1;43:99–109.
3. Abbas A, Khan MU, Ali M, Khan SU, Yang LT. A cloud-based framework for identification of influential health experts from Twitter. In 2015 IEEE 12th Intl Conf on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing and 2015 IEEE 12th Intl Conf on Autonomic and Trusted Computing and 2015 IEEE 15th Intl Conf on Scalable Computing and Communications and Its Associated Workshops (UIC-ATC-ScalCom). 2015, August. pp. 831–38. IEEE.
4. Gunther Eysenbach AR. Evidence-based patient choice and consumer health informatics in the Internet age. J Med Internet Res. 2001 Jun 7;3(2):e19.
5. Skorin-Kapov L, Matijasevic M. Analysis of QoS requirements for e‐health services and mapping to evolved packet system QoS classes. Int J Telemed Appl. 2010;2010(1):628086.
6. Pussewalage HS, Oleshchuk VA. Privacy preserving mechanisms for enforcing security and privacy requirements in E-health solutions. International Journal of Information Management. 2016 Dec 1;36(6):1161–-73.
7. Shin MS, Jeon HS, Ju YW, Lee BJ, Jeong SP. Constructing RBAC Based Security Model in u‐Healthcare Service Platform. The Scientific World Journal. 2015;2015(1):937914.
8. Simplicio MA, Iwaya LH, Barros BM, Carvalho TC, Näslund M. SecourHealth: a delay-tolerant security framework for mobile health data collection. IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2014 Apr 24;19(2):761–72.
9. Azeez NA, Lasisi AA. Empirical and statistical evaluation of the effectiveness of four lossless data compression algorithms. Nigerian J Technol Develop. 2016;13(2):64–73.
10. Barua M, Liang X, Lu R, Shen X. PEACE: An efficient and secure patient-centric access control scheme for eHealth care system. In2011 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS). 2011 Apr 10. pp. 970–975. IEEE.
11. Guo L, Zhang C, Sun J, Fang Y. Paas: A privacy-preserving attribute-based authentication system for ehealth networks. In 2012 IEEE 32nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. 2012 Jun 18. pp. 224–33. IEEE.
12. Azeez NA, Oluwatosin A. CyberProtector: identifying compromised URLs in electronic mails with Bayesian classification. In 2016 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI). 2016 Dec 15. pp. 959–65. IEEE.
13. Gajanayake R, Iannella R, Sahama T. Privacy oriented access control for electronic health records. Electronic J Health Informatics. 2014;8(2).
14. Zhu H, Huang R, Liu X, Li H. SPEMR: A new secure personal electronic medical record scheme with privilege separation. In2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC). 2014 Jun 10. pp. 700–705. IEEE.
15. Sunagar V, Biradar C. Securing public health records in cloud computing patient centric and fine grained data access control in multi owner settings. Int J Sci Appl Inform Technol (IJSAIT). 2014;3(4):18–21.
16. Liu W, Liu X, Liu J, Wu Q, Zhang J, Li Y. Auditing and revocation enabled role-based access control over outsourced private EHRs. In 2015 IEEE 17th international conference on high performance computing and communications, 2015 IEEE 7th international symposium on cyberspace safety and security, and 2015 IEEE 12th international conference on embedded software and systems. 2015, August. pp. 336–341. IEEE.
17. Barua M, Liang X, Lu R, Shen X. ESPAC: Enabling Security and Patient-centric Access Control for eHealth in cloud computing. International Journal of Security and Networks. 2011 Jan 1;6(2–3):67–76.

The changing face of healthcare due to integration of the cloud into e-health systems allows for storage, sharing and access to data in a highly secure manner, but this also raises questions about security and privacy issues. In this research paper, the authors address one such privacy and security concern, which is data confidentiality and loss of integrity within the e-health systems based on Cloud Computing. The paper explores several vulnerabilities, such as unauthorized access to sensitive information, data theft, and system errors that threaten sensitive health data’s confidentiality and accuracy. Furthermore, the authors address how cloud computing can assist in reducing these threats, which include encryption, access control mechanisms, and privacy protection mechanisms. The findings of the study demonstrate how cloud computing improves the security of patient’s data, focusing on security challenges associated with modern e-health systems solutions. The final chapter proposes ways in which healthcare professionals, policymakers, and technology developers can improve the legal protection of patients and units within organizations for effective implementation of e-health systems.

Keywords: Cloud computing, data confidentiality, E-health systems, privacy protection, security mechanisms

🔒 This is a subscription article

Full text is available to subscribers and institutional members. Please choose an option below to access it.

1. Zhang R, Liu L. Security models and requirements for healthcare application clouds. In 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on cloud Computing. 2010 Jul 5. pp. 268–275. IEEE.
2. Abbas A, Bilal K, Zhang L, Khan SU. A cloud-based health insurance plan recommendation system: A user centered approach. Future Generation Computer Systems. 2015 Feb 1;43:99–109.
3. Abbas A, Khan MU, Ali M, Khan SU, Yang LT. A cloud-based framework for identification of influential health experts from Twitter. In 2015 IEEE 12th Intl Conf on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing and 2015 IEEE 12th Intl Conf on Autonomic and Trusted Computing and 2015 IEEE 15th Intl Conf on Scalable Computing and Communications and Its Associated Workshops (UIC-ATC-ScalCom). 2015, August. pp. 831–38. IEEE.
4. Gunther Eysenbach AR. Evidence-based patient choice and consumer health informatics in the Internet age. J Med Internet Res. 2001 Jun 7;3(2):e19.
5. Skorin-Kapov L, Matijasevic M. Analysis of QoS requirements for e‐health services and mapping to evolved packet system QoS classes. Int J Telemed Appl. 2010;2010(1):628086.
6. Pussewalage HS, Oleshchuk VA. Privacy preserving mechanisms for enforcing security and privacy requirements in E-health solutions. International Journal of Information Management. 2016 Dec 1;36(6):1161–-73.
7. Shin MS, Jeon HS, Ju YW, Lee BJ, Jeong SP. Constructing RBAC Based Security Model in u‐Healthcare Service Platform. The Scientific World Journal. 2015;2015(1):937914.
8. Simplicio MA, Iwaya LH, Barros BM, Carvalho TC, Näslund M. SecourHealth: a delay-tolerant security framework for mobile health data collection. IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2014 Apr 24;19(2):761–72.
9. Azeez NA, Lasisi AA. Empirical and statistical evaluation of the effectiveness of four lossless data compression algorithms. Nigerian J Technol Develop. 2016;13(2):64–73.
10. Barua M, Liang X, Lu R, Shen X. PEACE: An efficient and secure patient-centric access control scheme for eHealth care system. In2011 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS). 2011 Apr 10. pp. 970–975. IEEE.
11. Guo L, Zhang C, Sun J, Fang Y. Paas: A privacy-preserving attribute-based authentication system for ehealth networks. In 2012 IEEE 32nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. 2012 Jun 18. pp. 224–33. IEEE.
12. Azeez NA, Oluwatosin A. CyberProtector: identifying compromised URLs in electronic mails with Bayesian classification. In 2016 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI). 2016 Dec 15. pp. 959–65. IEEE.
13. Gajanayake R, Iannella R, Sahama T. Privacy oriented access control for electronic health records. Electronic J Health Informatics. 2014;8(2).
14. Zhu H, Huang R, Liu X, Li H. SPEMR: A new secure personal electronic medical record scheme with privilege separation. In2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC). 2014 Jun 10. pp. 700–705. IEEE.
15. Sunagar V, Biradar C. Securing public health records in cloud computing patient centric and fine grained data access control in multi owner settings. Int J Sci Appl Inform Technol (IJSAIT). 2014;3(4):18–21.
16. Liu W, Liu X, Liu J, Wu Q, Zhang J, Li Y. Auditing and revocation enabled role-based access control over outsourced private EHRs. In 2015 IEEE 17th international conference on high performance computing and communications, 2015 IEEE 7th international symposium on cyberspace safety and security, and 2015 IEEE 12th international conference on embedded software and systems. 2015, August. pp. 336–341. IEEE.
17. Barua M, Liang X, Lu R, Shen X. ESPAC: Enabling Security and Patient-centric Access Control for eHealth in cloud computing. International Journal of Security and Networks. 2011 Jan 1;6(2–3):67–76.