Hybrid Encryption With Digitally Signed Optimal Key for Secured <scp>EHR</scp> Data Storage in Cloud Environment

ABSTRACT Problem/Purpose The electronic healthcare data (EHR) makes privacy preservation as paramount as it is composed of highly sensitive medical information. The conventional approaches have issues in managing the keys and the access control process. In modern society, the deployment of EHR storage has attained enormous effects. In the cloud‐based EHR storage, security concerns may occur. The main purpose of the research is to ensure the security of the EHR data in the cloud environment. Objective To provide security to the EHR data, a hybrid encryption with a digitally signed optimal key is proposed in this research work. The objective of the research is to protect the EHR data from unauthorized users, and it helps to maintain secure EHR transactions between the authorized parties. Methodology In this developed scheme, the hybrid adaptive encryption scheme (HAES) is utilized for performing encryption over the EHR data, where encryption mechanisms such as elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and attribute‐based encryption (ABE) are used for developing the HAES. The optimal keys are generated for encrypting the EHR data using the modified bear smell search algorithm (MBSSA). The integrity of the EHR health data is improved by digitally signing an optimal key. For the secure transmission of data, the encrypted data is stored in the cloud. Electronics Findings The developed MBSSA–HAES method used 15 s for encryption and 8.5 s for the decryption process. Conclusion The implemented data security mechanism highly protects the sensitive EHR data in the cloud environment.