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Ibm Bets Homomorphic Encryption Is Ready To Deliver Stronger Data Security For Early Adopters | Venturebeat [venturebeat.com]:

The topics of security and data have become almost inseparable as enterprises move more workloads to the cloud. But unlocking new uses for that data, particularly driving richer AI and machine learning, will require next-generation security.

To that end, companies have been developing confidential [venturebeat.com] computing [venturebeat.com] to allow data to remain encrypted while it is being processed. But as a complement to that, a security process known as fully homomorphic encryption is now on the verge of making its way out of the labs and into the hands of early adopters after a long gestation period.

Researchers like homomorphic encryption because it provides a certain type of security that can follow the data throughout its journey across systems. In contrast, confidential computing tends to be more reliant upon special hardware that can be powerful but is also limiting in some respects.

Companies such as Microsoft and Intel [venturebeat.com] have been big proponents of homomorphic encryption [venturebeat.com]. Last December, IBM made a splash when it released [ibm.com] its first homomorphic encryption services. [ibm.com] That package included educational material, support, and prototyping environments for companies that want to experiment.

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[...] With FHE, the data can remain encrypted while being used by an application. Imagine, for instance, a navigation app on a phone that can give directions without actually being able to see any personal information or location.

Companies are potentially interested in FHE because it would allow them to apply AI to data, such as from finance and health, while being able to promise users that the company has no way to actually view or access the underlying data.

While the concept of homomorphic encryption has been of interest for decades, the problem is that FHE has taken a huge amount of compute power, so much so that it has been too expensive to be practicable.

But researchers have made big advances in recent years.

[...] Maass said in the near term, IBM envisions FHE being attractive to highly regulated industries, such as financial services and health care.

"They have both the need to unlock the value of that data, but also face extreme pressures to secure and preserve the privacy of the data that they're computing upon," he said.

But he expects that over time a wider range of businesses will benefit from FHE. Many sectors want to improve their use of data, which is becoming a competitive differentiator. That includes using FHE to help drive new forms of collaboration and monetization. As this happens, IBM hopes these new security models will drive wider enterprise adoption of hybrid cloud platforms.

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