FEATURE : CYBERSECURITY
Demystifying Homomorphic Encryption ( HE ): What you need to know
In light of Apple ’ s major Swift Homomorphic Encryption announcement , Agnès Leroy , Senior Software Engineer , Zama , explains exactly what HE is , the different schemes and their capabilities , and where it might be used going forwards .
At the very end of July , the team working on Apple ’ s privacy-preserving technologies announced an exciting introduction ; ‘ swifthomomorphic-encryption ’, a new open-source package for its programming language Swift .
Using the powerful capabilities of homomorphic encryption ( HE ) – a cryptographic technique that allows computation on encrypted data without decryption or access to the decryption key – the news marks a significant turning point for data privacy , particularly for cloud services where data security is a primary concern .
According to a blog detailing the announcement , Apple has already been utilising HE in its own work and products but is now making the move to share this Swift implementation so that others – mainly developers and researchers – can contribute to it and use it for building secure applications that handle sensitive data responsibly .
While HE has been around since the 70s , the fact that one of the world ’ s most renowned technology companies is now advocating its use not only signals a real shift in how data privacy and security are being prioritised and implemented but will likely see the term ‘ homomorphic encryption ’ become more familiar to the general public , much like ‘ AI ’ and ‘ machine learning ’ have over the last couple of years .
Exactly what is HE ?
But as of now , HE – which has traditionally been a highly technical concept – remains somewhat complex
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