An increasing number of researchers, academic institutions, government agencies, and businesses adopt cloud computing because of its low initial investment, scalability, and other benefits. However, despite these advantages, data protection remains a significant concern in the context of data security and cloud computing. Although many solutions are proposed to solve this problem, a comprehensive review examining these existing methods is lacking. This creates a need to explore, categorize, and evaluate the effectiveness of these solutions in meeting the requirements of cloud data security. This review work provides a detailed and comparative analysis of the leading methods used to secure and share data in the cloud. It examines each technique, highlighting its function in data protection, its innovative solutions, core details such as workflow, accomplishments, scope, limitations, and future potential. A thorough comparison of these techniques is also presented. The paper concludes with an evaluation of how these methods can be applied to real-world scenarios, addressing existing research gaps and offering future directions in the field of cloud data security.