Enhancing Security and Intellectual Property Protection in Multi-Tenant Cloud Environments Using FPGA-Accelerated Architectures

Abstract

The rapid adoption of cloud computing has transformed computational paradigms, enabling scalable, on-demand access to computing resources across multi-tenant environments. While cloud infrastructure offers unparalleled flexibility and resource efficiency, it simultaneously introduces significant challenges in ensuring data security, intellectual property (IP) protection, and isolation among tenants. Hardware-based solutions, particularly field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and secure enclaves, have emerged as viable strategies to mitigate these risks. This research explores the integration of FPGA-accelerated architectures within multi-tenant cloud systems, focusing on their capacity to enforce zero-trust principles, provide fine-grained IP protection, and enable secure processing of sensitive workloads. By synthesizing existing theoretical frameworks, practical deployment cases, and standards such as IEEE 1735-2014 for electronic design IP encryption, this study elucidates mechanisms by which cloud providers and users can achieve resilient security without compromising performance. Furthermore, the paper examines contemporary deployment models in public cloud environments by major providers, including AWS, Xilinx-powered services, and Alibaba Cloud, highlighting practical implications for precision medicine, genomic computation, and large-scale parallel processing. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps in FPGA-based cloud security, advocating for adaptive, attribute-based access control and enhanced multi-tenancy isolation strategies to address evolving threats in distributed computing landscapes. The findings offer a comprehensive reference for academia, industry practitioners, and policy developers focused on secure, scalable, and IP-conscious cloud infrastructures.