Functional Encryption for Data Usage Compliance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods fail to effectively limit the use of collected data to its intended purpose, especially when shared with third parties, violating privacy regulations like GDPR, and lack practical solutions for ensuring data is not misused or reused for unauthorized purposes.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of functional encryption, which involves creating a pair of public and master private keys to encrypt data, allowing only specific functions to be computed on it, ensuring that data can only be used for declared and verified purposes, while keeping the original data encrypted and inaccessible for other uses.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If data is shared with third parties for outsourcing or data sharing, then productivity and service capability are improved, but data security and compliance with declared usage purposes deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments data access rights by creating function-specific private keys that allow third parties to perform only specific computations on encrypted data. This enables data to be shared with multiple third parties for different purposes simultaneously, with each party having restricted access to only their authorized function, thus maintaining security while enabling productive collaboration.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces functional encryption as an intermediary mechanism between data owners and third parties. The encryption scheme acts as a mediator that allows computation on encrypted data without exposing the plaintext, enabling secure data sharing while maintaining compliance with declared usage purposes through mathematical guarantees rather than trust-based relationships.
2Reliability
If traditional encryption is used to protect data, then data security is improved, but data utility for authorized purposes deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms static encryption into dynamic functional encryption where encryption keys are associated with specific functions. This allows the encryption scheme to adaptively permit different computations on the same encrypted data based on the function private key held by the requester, maintaining security while enabling versatile data utility for multiple authorized purposes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of encryption from a single decryption key to multiple function-specific private keys. This parameter transformation allows the system to maintain strong security guarantees while enabling different types of data access and computation based on the specific function key used, thus resolving the trade-off between security and utility.
3Reliability
If data is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access, then data privacy is improved, but the ability to process data for approved purposes deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical system of decrypting data before processing with a cryptographic system that allows direct computation on encrypted data. Instead of the traditional workflow requiring decryption followed by processing, functional encryption enables the processing to occur directly on ciphertext, maintaining privacy while simplifying the operational workflow for approved purposes.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of limiting data usage for certified purposes by using functional encryption, comprising: receiving from a software publisher an application code and declared privacy information, the declared privacy information specifies at least one declared usage for at least one data type; analyzing the application's usage of data collected by the application, to identify an actual usage of the at least one data type by a function; identifying when the actual usage is compliant with the at least one declared usage according to the analysis; in response to the identification, creating a pair of a public key and a master private key; creating a function private key for the function using the master private key; and sending the function private key to the software publisher to be used for operating the function on data which is encrypted using the public key.