There is growing adoption of internet based services and mobility devices in last two decades. With more number of devices falling under internet of things, cloud based service developments are equally growing. Such cloud solution providers act as a service hub for the cloud service they publish. While lowering the maintenance of software and hardware infrastructure, the cloud solution provider faces challenges in increasing service availability, reducing network management time, minimizing risk of data breaches etc. For data security, both cloud service provider & service consumers rely on indispensable firewalls that use authentication and authorization mechanism for each login user. In spite of these measures, the security of sensitive data still remains a challenge that secure data is vulnerable to unauthorized access. This research paper proposes a new protocol called Secure Authentication Protocol (SAPC) for the authentication purpose which provides mutual authentication between client and remote cloud server. User and Server have to prove their identity to each other at the time of login phase to utilize the cloud resources. Whenever a user logs in, remote cloud server generates dynamic symmetric key and shares the key with client device over insecure channel using key agreement protocol for maintaining security. Proposed SAPC approach helps to stop illegitimate users/devices/things from accessing authorized services/data of cloud service provider.

Authentication scheme, Cloud services, Insider attack, Key agreement, Mutual authentication, Session key, User Anonymity, Waveform

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