Every day, organizations, businesses, and governments handle a vast amount of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and other confidential data. This information needs to be encrypted both when it is stored (data at rest) and when it is transmitted (data in transit).
While modern encryption algorithms are nearly impossible to break (as they require so much processing power that breaking them is too costly and time-consuming to be feasible), they also make it impossible to process data without first decrypting it. Data that has been decrypted for processing can be vulnerable to hacker attacks or fail to comply with privacy regulations.
Especially with the rapid development of quantum computing, the use of quantum computers is becoming more common and increasingly capable of powerful information processing. Thus, encryption solutions considered reliable at present may no longer be truly secure in the era of quantum computing.
Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) can address the inherent vulnerability in all other methods of data protection mentioned above, even as quantum computing advances.
What is Fully Homomorphic Encryption ?
Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is an encryption scheme that allows computers to perform arbitrary computations on encrypted data. This enables devices to carry out calculations on ciphertexts without needing to decrypt them during the process.
Fully Homomorphic Encryption is beneficial for cloud computing and Big Data analytics because these processes handle large amounts of data. Calculations can be performed on sensitive information without revealing it to third parties.
Traditional encryption schemes use two separate keys to encrypt and decrypt data, and all information must be decrypted before processing. Fully Homomorphic Encryption provides users with an encryption key. However, users can use computers to perform arbitrary computations on plaintext without decrypting any information.
The development of Fully Homomorphic Encryption is significant for computing personal data while maintaining security. Although there is still little research on the commercial applicability of Fully Homomorphic Encryption, it has been successfully integrated into several industries.
Some databases, such as medical records or banking records, contain sensitive information about their clients. An employee may be granted access to the encryption key to add new information about a patient or client or to run queries related to history. They can extract relevant information without directly accessing the data in the database.
There are different types of homomorphic encryption:
- Partially Homomorphic Encryption;
- Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption;
- Leveled Fully Homomorphic Encryption;
- Fully Homomorphic Encryption.
Partially Homomorphic and Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption mean that only certain types of operations can be computed using encrypted data with limited repetition.
With Fully Homomorphic Encryption, computers can run an unlimited number of operations using encrypted data without restriction.
There are several benefits to using a Fully Homomorphic Encryption model:
- Sensitive private data can be stored on third-party servers and computations can be conducted without revealing any information. If Fully Homomorphic Encryption is implemented securely, server administrators cannot know what computations have been run on the data;
- Users do not have to choose between data usability and privacy, and no security measures are compromised in the process;
- Fully Homomorphic Encryption is quantum-safe and provides high resilience against quantum attacks.
