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Information Encryption for Email, Files, Documents and Databases
Breakthrough Technology for a Changing World...
In 1984, Adi Shamir, one of the inventors of the well-known RSA public key system, proposed that using identity directly as a public key, rather than relying on certificates, might be the best approach for simplifying public key cryptography. For the next two decades, numerous attempts were made to provide an Identity-Based Encryption algorithm, but no practical solution was found.
Your Identity Is the Key
In 2000, Dr. Dan Boneh and Dr. Matt Franklin achieved a mathematical breakthrough and invented the first practical Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) system. Their scheme uses bilinear mappings, known as Weil and Tate pairings, on elliptic curves to obtain an algorithm that can be used to turn a simple, well-recognized identity into a public/private key pair. From these powerful mathematics, comes an elegant mechanism to secure email, files, documents and databases – online and offline, without the need to pre-register recipients.
Fundamentally, the reason to use encryption is to protect data so that only a specific person (for example, bob@b.com) or a machine (for example, www.voltage.com) can access it. However, until now, encryption techniques have relied on long, randomly generated keys that must be mapped to identities using digitally-signed documents, called certificates. The management of these certificates, and the need to fetch a certificate before encrypting to a person or machine, has made encryption very difficult.
Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) takes a completely new approach to the problem of encryption. IBE can use any arbitrary string as a public key, enabling data to be protected without the need for certificates. Protection is provided by a key server that controls the mapping of identities to decryption keys.
The design of an Identity-Based Encryption system was a long-standing open problem in cryptography. Voltage now offers a platform based on the first secure, practical IBE system, the Boneh-Franklin IBE Algorithm.
Leveraging Identity-Based Encryption to Secure Email, Files, Documents and Databases
By using well-known identities as public keys, Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) eliminates the complexity of certificates, Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL) and other costly infrastructure. The practical application of IBE results in a solution that is easy to implement and easy to manage, without the overhead and cost inherent in traditional security solutions. The scalability of the IBE approach means that, for the first time, companies can protect sensitive information persistently and based on policy – no matter where it goes. The ability to securely share information opens up new business opportunities, better customer service and, most importantly, differentiated competitive advantage.
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