2014, year of encryption?

According to Unisys, 2014 will be the year of encryption.

Quite logical, regarding the protection of personal data needed after all those hacks the past years. Encrypting this data is not a bad option, but it has its drawbacks.

How can I search in encrypted data?

Is decrypting the data not necessary then? But this costs computer power and time diminishing the search efficiency. Is there a solution?

A possibility is homomorphic encryption, which is an encryption issue to tackle at different universities and companies like MIT, IBM, Fujitsu and Microsoft. What is it then? In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding messages (or information) in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. With homomorphic encryption, encrypted data could be processed without decrypting it first. This makes it ideal for Cloud applications, enabling vendors to process encrypted personal data without decryption, ensuring privacy of the data owner. This would be great in the financial and medical sector. One disadvantage, homomorphic encryption is a slow process. Full encryption is still practically impossible, but partially there are possibilities.

Which ones are part of the next blogposts. This tester's adventure in encryption continues!


PS:
This blogpost is also posted in the Dutch online magazine for IT-professionals Computable:

Versleutelde data-verwerking in de cloud