Imagine being able to perform any computational operation over any kind of data but do it while the data is fully encrypted. That is the promise of fully homomorphic encryption.

Fully homomorphic encryption was first theorized in the 1970s, but the first proposal for a plausible construction of a fully homomorphic encryption scheme didn’t arrive until 2009. We are now in the fourth-generation of fully homomorphic encryption and although performance is still a blocker for many applications, there’s been a series of major breakthroughs allowing real world application to take advantage of the approach.

Dr. Avradip Mandal received his PhD from the University of Luxembourg where his research focused on cryptography, in particular homomorphic encryption and theoretical symmetric key cryptography. He joins the show to describe what homomorphic encryption is, how it works, the history, and breakthroughs.

• Can you explain what homomorphic encryption is and how it works?