Secured Collaboration with Ciphertext Policy Attribute Based Signcryption in a Distributed Fog Environment for Medical Data Sharing

Smart hospitals are leveraging cloud computing as a practical platform for storing and sharing medical data, enhancing medical analyses. However, entrusting sensitive medical data to third parties poses risks to patient privacy. Cloud-based data sharing also leads to many hazards, including latency challenges and bandwidth concerns when accessing data through cloud storage. To address these security flaws inherent in centralized cloud systems, this study proposes employing ciphertext policy-sensitive attribute-based signcryption with verifiable designcryption within a spatially distributed fog environment. This method signs messages using sensitive attributes and access entitlements, organized in a tree structure alongside non-sensitive attributes. The proposed approach integrates attribute-based encryption, ensuring fine-grained access control and digital signatures to guarantee data authenticity and secrecy. Unlike conventional cloud computing, the data distribution occurs in fog computing, facilitating swift data analysis. Spatial data distribution via fog nodes offers advantages such as low latency, optimized bandwidth usage, offline capabilities, enhanced privacy and security, scalability, and improved redundancy. These benefits position fog computing as a crucial element in real-time, location-based data processing for data sharing applications. The proposed method incorporates secure data authentication, access controls, and resistance against message attacks. To assess its effectiveness, a comparative analysis is conducted with existing methods, focusing primarily on computational efficiency. This scientific evaluation aims to offer insights into the advantages and limitations of the proposed approach.