Fuzzy Keyword Search Scheme on an Encrypted Database in Cloud Computing Using Word Clustering

Database outsourcing in cloud computing is one of the main solutions to maintain and access a database easily without the need for large infrastructure investment. Although data owners usually trust service  providers and infrastructure providers in terms of maintainability and accessibility, but they are concerned about the privacy and confidentiality of information, and therefore prefer to keep data encrypted on cloud servers. Encrypted data is not searchable, and a solution needs to be provided by the server to search for that data. One solution is to use keyword indexing as metadata alongside the encrypted database. There are several key challenges to using these solutions: high volume of indexes, user error exposure and search speed. In this study, fuzzy keyword sets are used instead of fixed words when searching for users, and in order to reduce storage space using the keyword clustering method, appropriate fuzzy keyword sets are  selected and metadata with less production volume is used and encrypted. Using hierarchical clustering methods with specific metrics, the same keywords are placed in a cluster, and to find the desired keyword, it is not necessary to search all metadata and thus the search time is reduced. Practical results and evaluations show that the proposed method is practical, safe and efficient.