Cryptographic File Systems Performance: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

  • Authors:
  • Affiliations:
  • Venue:
  • SISW '03 Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Security in Storage Workshop
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Securing data is more important than ever, yet cryptographicfile systems still have not received wide use. Onebarrier to the adoption of cryptographic file systems is thatthe performance impact is assumed to be too high, but infact is largely unknown. In this paper we first survey availablecryptographic file systems. Second, we perform a performancecomparison of a representative set of the systems,emphasizing multiprogrammed workloads. Third, we discussinteresting and counterintuitive results. We show theoverhead of cryptographic file systems can be minimal formany real-world workloads, and suggest potential improvementsto existing systems. We have observed not only generaltrends with each of the cryptographic file systems wecompared but also anomalies based on complex interactionswith the operating system, disks, CPUs, and ciphers.