Title:
ENHANCING CLOUD SECURITY IN HEALTHCARE AND FINANCE: ZERO TRUST AND HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION FOR DATA PRIVACY AND RISK MANAGEMENT

Authors:
Karthik Kushala and Aravindhan Kurunthachalam, India

Abstract:
Cloud security in healthcare and finance is crucial due to the increasing risks of cyber threats and data breaches. Traditional security models relying on perimeter-based defenses and conventional encryption techniques fail to ensure data confidentiality during processing. Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) present a robust approach to mitigating these security concerns. ZTA enforces strict access control through continuous authentication and leastprivilege principles, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive data. Meanwhile, FHE enables computations on encrypted data without requiring decryption, eliminating exposure risks in untrusted cloud environments. However, challenges such as computational overhead and implementation complexity hinder the widespread adoption of FHE. This paper proposes an integrated security framework combining ZTA and FHE to enhance cloud security while optimizing performance for real-world applications. The proposed model ensures end-to-end encryption, regulatory compliance with standards like HIPAA and GDPR, and resilience against insider threats, unauthorized access, and data leaks. Experimental results demonstrate that integrating ZTA with FHE effectively secures sensitive transactions without compromising system usability. By implementing adaptive risk-based authentication and optimizing FHE computation efficiency, this approach provides a scalable and secure solution for healthcare and financial applications. Future research will focus on reducing the performance overhead of FHE and improving its integration with cloud-based AI-driven analytics.