SBIR Phase I: Enabling Computation on Encrypted Data on the Cloud and Beyond

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是通过解决当前通过加密保护使用中的数据的问题来增强数据安全性。通过克服构建完全同态加密解决方案的技术挑战，它有可能在云上建立信任。这将允许数据所有者加密他们的机密数据并处理加密的数据，而不受限制或必须先解密它。这一重要的新功能将支持进一步的数据迁移到云和新的安全加密数据即服务（EDaaS）模型，其中：(i)机密数据可以在加密和作为服务的情况下用于分析或机器学习，而无需解密或未经加密共享；（ii）数据所有者可以授权用户访问其加密数据，同时保持控制和权限。简而言之，数据所有者将能够安全地将机密数据迁移到云中，并保持完全的隐私和安全性，即使用于商业用途。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将调查和验证一种创新的混淆方法的可行性和性能，该方法可以应用于加密数据的无约束处理。这种正在申请专利的方法基于可逆计算，通过混淆裸函数和加/解密操作符来构建同态加密函数。然后，这些函数的库可以作为对加密数据进行通用和专用计算的构建块。为了证明可行性，该第一阶段项目解决了三个技术障碍：(I)验证方法以确保数据和功能的安全性，（ii）相对于现有同态加密方案的性能优化，以及（iii）与现有分析工具和云环境的连接，以托管和处理数据。该研究项目的目标是开发一种简单、快速、灵活的同态加密方法，该方法可以与私有和公共环境（如云）中的现有分析过程集成，以获得商业成功。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enhance data security by solving the current problem of securing data in use through encryption. It has the potential to build trust on the cloud by overcoming the technical challenges of building a fully homomorphic encryption solution. This will allow data owners to encrypt their confidential data and process that encrypted data without constraints or having to decrypt it first. This important new capability will enable further data migration to the cloud and a new secure Encrypted Data-as-a-Service (EDaaS) model where: (i) confidential data can be used for analyses or machine learning while encrypted and as a service, without ever being decrypted or shared without encryption; and (ii) data owners can authorize users to access their encrypted data while maintaining control and authority. In short, data owners will be able to securely migrate confidential data to the cloud and maintain full privacy and security, even for commercial use. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate and validate the feasibility and performance of an innovative obfuscation method that can be applied to allow the unconstrained processing of encrypted data. This patent-pending method is based on reversible computing to build homomorphic encryption functions by obfuscating bare functions combined with encryption/decryption operators. Libraries of these functions can then serve as a building block for generic and specialized calculations on encrypted data. To prove feasibility, this Phase I project addresses three technical hurdles: (i) validation of the method to ensure the security of data and functions, (ii) optimization of performance relative to existing homomorphic encryption schemes, and (iii) connectivity to existing analytical tools and cloud environments to host and process data. The goal of this research project is to develop a method for simple, fast, and flexible homomorphic encryption that can be integrated with existing analytical processes in private as well as public environments, such as the cloud, for commercial success.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.