IBM’s Fully Homomorphic Encryption Technology Gets Patent

IBM just records another patent in its name for a new technological development. This patent, numbered 8,565,435, is acquired for an encryption technique called Fully Homomorphic Encryption.

At a situation, where cloud service and solution providers are concerned about cloud security and data privacy, IBM has reached a breakthrough point to discover an ultimate solution of such challenges. The technique is based on the structure called ideal lattice, a mathematical object, which locks the data from all sides with no way out.

Mathematical Procedures:

Fully Homomorphic Encryption undertakes complex mathematical pattern that is yet to be completely disclosed. Using the generalized cyclic lattices from number theory, this method of translation forms an unbreakable framework of encoded information. The technique has the ability to easily solve puzzles that were scaring even the scientists for over last few decades. This is said to be another major expansion under the domain of encryption, after public key invention.

Business Data Analysis:

Businesses and Enterprises, which have already set up their confidential and sensitive data on shared clouds using IBM services, are comforted to share their informational resources. This will allow their vendors to analyze the facts, figures, and reports, without putting these into any jeopardy. The method does provide a limited access to these vendors in order to analyze the statistics; for example sales, financial statements, banking details etc. However, it does not let them to reach the original private data.

Homomorphic Encryption Transition:

The stated encryption technology hasn’t been seen for the first time, or is not emerged from nothing. Homomorphic Encryption has underwent different stages of evolution, since 2009. In the initial days, Craig Gentry and co-founder Shai Halevi, who were both researches at IBM, carried several tests and modifications using their new invention. However, it was not then implementable. Further in 2011, scientists and technologists made more implications to get this thing applicable. The inventor Craig Gentry eventually realized a valid means of employing it in cloud technology.

IBM History in Patents:

Acquiring a patent is not something unusual for a brand name like International Business Machines. Although, there is still a week left to end this year, IBM is highly anticipated to top the list of patent acquirers in 2013. It is also reported that in the previous year, IBM leaded the category by acquiring 6478 patents from U.S government. The company was followed by Samsung with the attainment of 5081 patents. However, in its own niche of competition, Microsoft falls behind this company with less than half (2613) patents registered. HP and Intel hold third and fourth position by acquiring 1394 and 1290 patents, respectively.

IBM is a giant player with late entrance in the cloud market, which has consistently tried to gain a competitive advantage to both, company and clients. With an annual investment of over $6 billion, IBM continues to determine new approaches for designing products and delivering services, including cloud services. This could be reason why IBM heads the patent realizers’ list and is the first one to bring such improvement in cloud security.