WELCOME TO HC@WORKS Project

Homomorphic Encryption Technology

Best Solution For Your Privacy-Preserving Services

CEA, CNR

ATOS, ENGINEERING, THALES

Contributors to This Innovation Project !

Our objectives

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) is a new kind of disruptive cryptographic techniques which on top of allowing the scrambling of data in order to protect their confidentiality also provides the necessary mathematical building blocks for the execution of general algorithms directly on encrypted data. As such, HE is a unique ground breaking software-only technology allowing to enforce the confidentiality of data when they are manipulated by untrusted servers without decryption and without disclosing any secret to those servers. The HC@WORKS project will demonstrate the feasibility of embedding HE-based privacy-preserving processing techniques by the development of three industrial pilots integrated in the product lines of their respective carriers: Thales CYBELS (cybersecurity), Atos CSG (eHealth) and ENGINEERING OPENNESS (IS3 Lab). This will be done by leveraging on supporting previously developed software tools as well as the unique experimental results obtained by CEA LIST which demonstrates the practicality of present day HE performances on a set of lightweight yet real-world algorithms representative of the project use cases.

Our Project Plan

Innovation

Inherently, the ability to execute algorithms directly on encrypted data is a key enabler for solving a number of privacy issues ... Read More

Retrospective

In 2010, when homomorphic encryption was still totally impractical, CEA LIST, betting on a fast-paced progress track, started to work on homomorphic encryption ... Read More

Development

An integrated and ready-to-market suite of software tools and environment to cost effectively deploy privacy-preserving services based on homomorphic encryption ... Read More

Our Innovation

Inherently, the ability to execute algorithms directly on encrypted data is a key enabler for solving a number of privacy issues with respect to delivering service on cloud computing platforms, an ICT evolution full of promises in terms of services but also coming with many threats be it only in terms of data privacy and confidentiality.

Additionally, privacy preserving computation is also an enabler for the creation of new high added-value services resulting from the encounter of data and algorithms which could not have interacted without having privacy on both side, be it for normative reasons (e.g., medical data must be encrypted at all time when outsourced) or intellectual property reasons.

Via its three industrial pilots HC@WORKS has been engineered to prepare the commercial deployment (as early as 2016) of three privacy- enhanced products, highly innovative in their respective fields. Also, by demonstrating the practical performance of a ground breaking new technology for privacy preserving computation, HC@WORKS will contribute in creating the market for that technology for creating new privacy- preserving services or allowing existing privacy-intrusive services to "go private".

By convincingly reaching its objectives on the pilots, it can be expected that HC@WORKS will also contribute to create the market required for commercialization of the innovative cryptocomputing technology validated as part of the project.

Our Retrospective

In 2010, when homomorphic encryption was still totally impractical, CEA LIST, betting on a fast-paced progress track, started to work on homomorphic encryption from the point view of bootstrapping a complete technology for the execution of real programs on encrypted data. Thus, rather than focusing on the mathematical structure of the encryption systems, the team at CEA LIST focused on the software tooling (compiler, parallel code generator, runtime environment) required to make the connection between an algorithm written in a high level programming language (C++) and the very low level formalism of homomorphic encryption. As a results, CEA LIST was one of the first to demonstrate the practical execution of real algorithms (most notably from the field of medical diagnostic). As such, the technology brought into the project is so far unique and necessary to realize the full applicative and commercial potential of homomorphic encryption. In this context, the present project intends to leverage on this technologic advances to achieve a first-to-market position for both the cryptocomputing technology and its embedding in the use case providers product lines.

Our Development

An integrated and ready-to-market suite of software tools and environment to cost effectively deploy privacy-preserving services based on homomorphic encryption along with business model and market analysis.

Three full scale industrial pilots preparing for commercial exploitation of both the core technology and the privacy-enhanced product variants derived from them.

The consortium is centred around 2 technology providers (CEA, CNR) and 3 use case providers (Engineering, Thales, Atos). The technology providers are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive in covering the project needs as CEA LIST brings its compilation, parallel code generation and optimized homomophic encryption technologies whereas CNR brings the overall system and telecom deployment infrastructure.