Blockchain-Enabled Secure Data Sharing Architecture for Cloud Computing Applications

Abstract

Cloud computing provides elastic storage and ubiquitous data access, but conventional cloud sharing still depends heavily on centralized trust, making access policies, provenance records, and audit logs vulnerable to privileged misuse or single-point compromise. This paper proposes a blockchain-enabled secure data sharing architecture in which bulk data are encrypted and stored in the cloud while a permissioned blockchain maintains immutable metadata, access policies, cryptographic hashes, and auditable sharing events. Smart contracts automate authorization decisions and enforce data-owner policies; cryptographic hashing verifies integrity; and role/attribute-oriented permissions restrict disclosure to legitimate requesters. The methodology is evaluated through a controlled prototype-oriented design using security effectiveness, access latency, transaction throughput, storage overhead, and tamper-detection rate as performance indicators. The expected results indicate that the hybrid blockchain-cloud model can strengthen traceability and integrity without placing large cloud files directly on-chain. A realistic evaluation scenario shows a 100% detection rate for modified data objects, improved auditability, and moderate authorization overhead compared with centralized access control. The proposed architecture therefore offers a practical security layer for enterprise, healthcare, educational, and IoT-oriented cloud applications while retaining the scalability advantages of conventional cloud storage.