Fujitsu labs develop technology capable of searching encrypted data to maintain privacy

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of a technology that can perform concealed searches of encrypted data in its encrypted form.

Searching data while it is encrypted makes it possible to maintain a high level of privacy with no risk of leaks - particularly important for personal data such as DNA, medical data, biological data, and educational records.

Through outsourcing, searches of confidential data can be carried out safely as text data and keyword search terms kept private.

Whether or not search hits are obtained also remains undisclosed.

Based on homomorphic encryption(1) which allows computations to be performed on confidential encrypted data without disclosure, Fujitsu has developed a new batch search method that accelerates the processing speed of searching for matches on the encrypted data.

The new technology can search 16,000 characters in one second, and does not need an index of searchable keywords to be generated in advance. Instead, it makes discretionary searches of the encrypted text directly for any search key.

Details of this technology are being presented at the Fujitsu North America Technology Forum 2014, opening January 22 in Mountain View, California, and also at the Symposium on Cryptography and Information Security (SCIS2014), opening January 21 in Kagoshima, Japan.