We have come a long way since the invention of cathode-ray tubes, magnetic drums, tape drives, and, for the older millennials out there, hard-disk drives. Collective groans and sighs aside, it is reasonable to say that we have reached the pinnacle of data storage evolution with cloud storage – large data centers located in the cloud which can be accessed anywhere in the world via the Internet. In other words, data ranging from personal family photographs to corporate financial reports are saved to a remote database instead of the computer’s hard drive.
Cloud storage services like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and many others help facilitate the sharing of documents and files across various devices and entities. While these services utilize password protection to sign into the account, cloud services usually have access to these files – allowing users the convenience of searching, navigating, and editing their documents. However, some users may want to encrypt their files before saving them. In this case, searching for the file would be akin to looking for a needle in a mountain of haystacks!
Essentially, users are forced to choose between the ease of searchability, which directly affects convenience and productivity, and security – in protecting critical information, security is the cornerstone that facilitates trust and integrity upon which our digitalized world relies heavily.
What then can be done to strike a delicate balance without making Faustian-esque bargains?
Enter Exipnos – the brainchild of Dr. Najwa Aaraj, Chief Researcher, Dr. Chiara Marcolla, Lead Cryptographer and Xiaojie Zhu, Lead Cryptography Engineer at the Cryptography Research Center (CRC) of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading global scientific research center and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC).
Exipnos may still be considered the new kid on the block when compared to Sophos and Mitra, but its potential is clearly unmatched. In addition to guaranteeing the enhancement of both the performance and security of searchable encryption, it also mathematically verifies the delivery of full, uncompromised search results, while protecting against cloud service “cheating” cases to reduce processing overhead.
By leveraging dynamic encryption, Exipnos proves more useful and highly secure thanks to a system that incrementally updates both the documents and the index. However, this process requires the leaking of a small amount of data to the server. While the idea of releasing even an iota of information might seem daunting, it would be - as English philosopher Jeremy Bentham once noted – a small sacrifice for the greater good. Incredibly, minimal data leakage will instead improve the system’s performance and avert any significant risk of state-of-the-art attacks.
We already know that privacy-enhanced technology in our data-driven world is crucial to safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive, personal data. Exipnos is a prime example of a workable solution that will eventually allow the searching and processing of encrypted stored data without compromising data privacy, paving the way for searchable encryption on cloud services.
Learn more about Exipnos, here: https://bit.ly/40Mpc0E