Abstract: Data can be outsourced as backups off-site to thirdparty cloud storage services in order to reduce data management costs. However, security must be provided for the outsourced data, which is maintained by third parties. We implement FADE, a secure cloud storage system that basically achieves fine-grained; file assured deletion and policy-based access control. It also associates outsourced files with file access policies and securely deletes files to make them unrecoverable to anyone upon revocations of file access policies. To achieve these security goals, FADE is based on a set of cryptographic key operations that are self-maintained by a quorum of key managers that are usually independent of third-party clouds. FADE acts as a secure overlay system that works seamlessly a top today’s cloud storage services. To implement a working prototype of FADE atop Amazon S3, one of the most happening cloud storage services, and empirically shows that FADE provides policy-based file assured deletion with a minimal tradeoff of performance overhead. Our work provides the information about how to incorporate value-added security features into current data outsourcing applications. Keywords: Attribute- based encryption, Cryptography, FADE, Metadata, Policy-based access control, Secure overlay