Measuring the Efficiency of EC2 Cryptographic Systems

Abstract

In a world driven by technology, encryption is necessary to protect personal data, but it comes at a cost for the environment. We explored how much energy encryption really uses up on cloud systems, with a focus on Amazon’s EC2. The runtime data was collected from the EC2 t2.micro to test different encryption settings such as the file sizes, algorithm type, and platform. Using the information, linear regression models were built in an effort to predict the energy usage based on runtime and message size. We found that longer runtimes resulted from larger messages. The goal is to assist other users and developers in choosing smarter encryption setups and generate recommendations that are both easier and greener.