What is Fully Homomorphic Encryption?

Fully homomorphic encryption is an encryption scheme that lets computers perform arbitrary computations using encrypted data. This allows devices to perform computations on ciphertexts without decrypting them throughout the process.

Fully homomorphic encryption is beneficial for cloud computing and Big Data analytics as these processes work with large quantities of data. The computations can be done with sensitive information without revealing it to third parties.

Traditional encryption schemes use two separate keys to encrypt and decrypt data, and any information must be decrypted before it is processed. Fully homomorphic encryption provides users with an encryption key. However, users can utilize computers to perform computations on plaintext arbitrarily without decrypting any of the information.

The development of fully homomorphic encryption has been significant for computing private data and maintaining security. While there is still little research into the commercial applicability of fully homomorphic encryption, it has been successfully integrated into some industries.

Some databases, such as medical or banking records, contain sensitive information related to their clients. An employee may be given access to an encryption key to add new information on the patient or client or run queries regarding their history. They are able to extract relevant information without having direct access to 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 and somewhat homomorphic encryption means that only certain types of operations can be computed using the encryption data with limited repetition.

With fully homomorphic encryption, computers are able to run an unlimited number of operations using encrypted data, an unlimited number of times.

There are several benefits to using the fully homomorphic encryption model:

• Sensitive private data can be stored on third-party servers and computations can be conducted without revealing any information. If the fully homomorphic encryption is securely implemented, the server administrators are unable to know what computations were run on the data;
• Users do not have to choose between data usability and privacy, and no security measures are compromised during the process;
• Fully homomorphic encryption is quantum-safe and offers high levels of resilience against quantum attacks.