The concept of data privacy has driven the globe to embrace a slew of new advancements, the most secure of them being encryption. Traditional encryption methods used today, provide a fast and safe means to store data in cloud-based services; but, to access it, businesses must, either decrypt data in the cloud, which might cause security issues, or download the data, decrypt it, and do computing, which can be costly and time-consuming.

However, Homomorphic encryption enabled computation on encrypted data, is the solution to this challenge. Homomorphic encryption allows enterprises to safely communicate sensitive information with third parties in order to obtain safe computational services. With HE, the cloud service or outsourced provider has just encrypted data to work with and can only do calculations on it. These services then provide the encrypted result to the owner, who can use a private key to decrypt it. 

Homomorphic encryption will change the concept of data privacy in the near future, with some immediate effects to the businesses, they are :

Ethical data monetization

The monetization of personal data is a controversial subject in itself.  The Governmental and intergovernmental organizations like the EU have already passed regulations like the EU’s Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to curve the growing nature of data monetization.

Although from a business perspective, big data is now a decisive factor for industries like financial services, retail, information technology, and healthcare. However, with homomorphic encryption, businesses can now use data without seeing its unencrypted values. 

Homomorphic encryption protects the privacy of users and patients by encrypting data and sending it to commercial cloud environments for research and data exchange. For example -Predictive analysis of medical data without jeopardizing data privacy, consumer privacy in tailored advertising, financial privacy for stock price prediction algorithms, and forensic picture recognition.

Supply Chain Protection

Currently, the majority of the businesses are massively aligned on trusted cloud operators with the responsibility to secure their valuable data on the ethical ground. As, In order to accomplish a business’s tasks, these contractors, vendors, and others frequently require access to the company's sensitive and confidential data. 

Additionally, with recent incidents on view, the dangers of unsecured supply chains have been massively highlighted, as well as how hackers would use the weakest link in the network to achieve their goals. As a result, sending sensitive data to a partner might expose a company to a costly and harmful data breach.

Homomorphic encryption can aid in the protection of a company's supply chain against these threats. A data breach provides no harm to the organization if all data given to third parties for processing is encrypted. This makes it possible for a company to outsource key data processing with little risk.

Safe Data Sharing

Without adding additional sensitive variables into the organization's data holdings, homomorphic encryption allows enterprises to safely interact across organizational or jurisdictional borders. This is critical because exposure to these indicators may result in increased reporting obligations or the disclosure of competitive advantage.

Homomorphic Encryption enables these businesses to safely exploit external data assets in a decentralized way without disclosing sensitive indicators by shielding data while it is being handled. The technology can also be set up to allow them to continue to adhere to the data owner's access and verification policies.

Challenges Ahead

There are a number of daunting challenges lying ahead, for the real-world implementation of homomorphic encryption. Right now, HE is incredibly slow and non- performant making it irrelevant for any business implementation. For example - Right now, the operation run by the HElib C++ library for homomorphic encryption is a million times slower than an operation run in a corresponding plain text.

Secondly, the other vital limitation of homomorphic encryption is the requirement for either application modifications or dedicated and specialized client-server applications to make it work functionally. This, in turn, will increase the cost of ownership to a new level creating a  distraction from more important strategic initiatives.

Additionally, the limitation of multiple assess is also an underlying issue for the implementation of HE. For example -suppose, there are a large number of users on the same system who want to keep their personal information safe from the supplier. One approach would be for the provider to maintain a separate database for each user, which would be encrypted using the user's public key. If this database is too large consisting of multiple users, the system will quickly turn to be infeasible for multiple access.

With these limitations ahead, it is nearly for businesses to access HE in the near future. However, on the other hand, since the very inception of the concept of Homomorphic encryption in the late 20th century, the progress till now is really impressive. With this picture in mind, it can be said that in the coming decade Homomorphic will be the future of encryption.