With previous encryption technologies that could search and compute data while still encrypted, encryption and decryption of search results used the same key, creating issues when used among organizations.

Now, Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu Laboratories of America have developed an encryption technology that can match the data of various organizations that was encrypted with different keys, and can determine the results of this matching for a specified group of organizations.

Based on the theory of relational cryptography, a concept devised by Fujitsu Laboratories of America that calculates the degree to which encrypted information matches, Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu Laboratories of America developed technology that can determine a match between text strings encrypted with different encryption keys.

With this technology, registered strings and search strings are encrypted with the encryption key of each organization. A registered string can be compared with the search string to see if they correspond while still encrypted, on a cloud server used for matching.

The strings are encrypted with a one-way function which has similar effects to a hash function, so they cannot be decrypted even with the keys used to encrypt them. The matching results are also encrypted, and can only be seen by a person holding a dedicated match key.

In internal tests conducted by Fujitsu Laboratories, it was confirmed that one pair of text strings could be matched in 0.02 of a second using a typical PC.

By applying this technology to genetic data or other medical data, for example, medical research institutes or pharmaceutical companies could see whether the information they need is included in a registered database while keeping patient data anonymized. Such applications are expected to support the diagnosis of rare diseases and create efficiencies in new drug discoveries.

This technology also enables near matches, which allow for a difference of a few bits in the text strings. It can also be applied beyond the medical field, to a variety of search scenarios involving data that previously was the subject of concerns about leaks, such as personal data or company secrets, in such fields as finance, education, public administration, marketing, and patent investigations. The technology enables secure data links that transcend organizational boundaries.

Fujitsu Laboratories will work on compressing the data size and accelerating the speed of this technology, with the aim of bringing it into practical implementation in fiscal 2016.