New Easier Way to Encrypt Large Amounts of Data
Researchers from many world renowned universities and research labs such as UCLA or Root Labs have been focusing for quite a while on data encryption. According to the Register, current research lead to an encryption scheme that has the potential to simplify the protection of sensitive information. This encryption scheme allows banks, hospitals and other organizations to lock files using keys that are based on specific attributes: an employee’s position or geographic location.
The method, which was unveiled last week, adds to the growing body of research known as functional, or attribute-based encryption. Functional encryption is designed to solve the hassle tied to traditional public-key encryption resulting from distributing and managing thousands or millions of private keys authorized people need to decrypt protected data. If 1,000 people in an organization need to securely share their public key with their co-workers, that requires close to one million separate exchanges.
Functional encryption tries to simplify things. It allows data to be encrypted using attributes directly tied to the recipients, such as their names or email addresses, without the need for the parties to have exchanged keys ahead of time. Rather than relying on a single key that unlocks all data, functional encryption envisions a more flexible sort of system where a personal key unlocks some doors but not others.
