Source: vchalup via Adobe Stock Photo

Quantum-resilient cryptography took a step forward this week with the launch of the FHE Technical Consortium for Hardware (FHETCH), a group focused on interoperability between fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) hardware and software for real-world applications. The new alliance will bring together FHE developers, hardware manufacturers, and cloud providers to accelerate the development of commercial FHE products.

Fully homomorphic encryption is a quantum-resilient cryptography method that allows encrypted data to be processed without first decrypting it. This method maintains data privacy and allows organizations to securely share data across industries, even in untrusted environments. Potential applications include medical data analysis, financial transactions, private cloud computing, machine learning and other types of confidential transactions or communications. 

Niobium, one of the three founding members, noted in a company blog post that FHE needs "more practical standardization." Optalysys and Chain Reaction are the other two founding members.

"Without common technical standards, implementing FHE has been costly and complex for enterprises," Niobium said.

There is currently a performance gap between existing FHE solutions and what organizations need to make FHE deployment practical. FHETCH will focus on creating FHE hardware acceleration technologies, creating open technical standards to ensure resulting products align with global regulatory frameworks, and integrating with existing data center formats and software libraries.

The consortium's initial focus will be on developing an API abstraction layer to enable any FHE hardware accelerator to interface with any FHE library. This will increase the flexibility of FHE deployments, simplify application development, and accelerate the development of new hardware and software solutions, the consortium said in a statement.

"FHETCH will give the industry a shared foundation, enabling the rapid development of badly needed FHE solutions that will mathematically guarantee privacy and compliance long-term," Jorge Myszne, CPO of Niobium's CPO, said in a statement.