FHE Encryption Getting Support from DARPA

The approach is getting more support.    Will post quantum decryption threaten it?

Intel will develop a fully homomorphic encryption chip for DARPA  BY MARIA DEUTSCHER

Intel Corp. today announced that it has been entrusted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a chip that will enable applications to work with encrypted data without having to unscramble it first.

The chip will use an emerging encryption method known as fully homomorphic encryption to facilitate such processing. The project was announced today and is described as a multiyear program that will also include Microsoft Corp., which will assist with development. 

In the enterprise, it’s standard practice to encrypt data both when it’s sitting in storage and while it’s zipping across the network. Encryption can prevent hackers from reading records if they gain access to them in a breach. But current cryptography methods don’t block all eavesdropping attempts.

The weak point is that encrypted data has to be unscrambled by the applications that use it before they can carry out computations. That creates opportunities for hackers to access sensitive information while it’s kept in a readable form. With the chip it will develop for DARPA, Intel hopes to reduce the risks stemming from the requirement to unscramble data by harnessing fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE for short, which allows applications to process information without decrypting it.  ...'