Simulation of a Homomorphic Encryption System

Cryptology is defined as the science of making communication incomprehensible to third parties who have no right to read and understand the data or messages. Cryptology consists of two parts, namely, cryptography and cryptanalysis. Cryptography analyzes methods of encrypting messages, and cryptanalysis analyzes methods of decrypting encrypted messages. Encryption is the process of translating plaintext data into something that appears to be random and meaningless. Decryption is the process of converting this random text into plaintext. Cloud computing is the legal transfer of computing services over the Internet. Cloud services let individuals and businesses to use software and hardware resources at remote locations. Widespread use of cloud computing raises the question of whether it is possible to delegate the processing of data without giving access to it. However, homomorphic encryption allows performing computations on encrypted data without decryption. In homomorphic encryption, only the encrypted version of the data is given to the untrusted computer to process. The computer will perform the computation on this encrypted data, without knowing anything on its real value. Finally, it will send back the result, and whoever has the proper deciphering key can decrypt the cryptogram correctly. The decrypted result will be equal to the intended computed value. In this paper, homomorphic encryption and their types are reviewed. Also, a simulation of somewhat homomorphic encryption is examined.

Electronic Health Record Security in Cloud

Security is the primary issue nowadays because cybercrimes are increasing. The organizations can store and maintain their data on their own, but it is not cost effective, so for convenience they are choosing cloud. Due to its popularity, the healthcare organizations are storing their sensitive data to cloud-based storage systems, that is, electronic health records (EHR). One of the most feasible methods for maintaining privacy is homomorphism encryption (HE). HE can combine different services without losing security or displaying sensitive data. HE is nothing but computations performed on encrypted data. According to the type of operations and limited number of operations performed on encrypted data, it is categorized into three types: partially homomorphic encryption (PHE), somewhat homomorphic encryption (SWHE), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). HE method is very suitable for the EHR, which requires data privacy and security.