Two Technologies for Digital Transformation: “Secret Sharing” and “Secure Computation”

To deal with the recent challenges surrounding data security, Yoshikazu Taguchi of ZenmuTech stresses the need for a “paradigm shift in security.” He insisted that it is essential to shift from “security focused on protection” to “security focused on use,” to start viewing security spending as a “strategic investment” rather than a “cost.” ZenmuTech’s “secret sharing” and “secure computing” are key technologies for realizing this shift.

Secret sharing is an encryption technique that divides information into multiple fragments to protect its confidentiality. The information can only be reconstituted when all the fragments are reassembled. In the meantime, the individual fragments on their own are meaningless pieces of data that offer no readable information. As Taguchi explained, this assures that a loss or theft of fragments of data “does not become a security incident.”

The company offers this secret sharing technology in its ZENMU Virtual Drive Enterprise Edition (ZEE), a service for PCs designed to prevent information leaks, as well as a product to protect servers and data in physical transit. The company also offers the core of its secret sharing technology, the ZENMU Engine, for use in creating various solutions with other companies.

The other key technology, secure computing, is a state-of-the-art technique for computing data in encrypted form. QueryAhead is a platform that enables secure computing using Multi Party Computation (MPC), a method that utilizes secret sharing technology.

A data provider sends dispersed fragments of data created using secret sharing to separate computational nodes (servers) one by one. The results of the distributed computation performed using the data fragments at the different nodes can be reintegrated to produce final computation results, which can then be used for data analysis and other purposes. As Taguchi explained, as long as all the data at all the computation nodes are not leaked, the original data cannot be reconstituted, so “the information provider can feel secure.”

In conclusion, Taguchi pointed out that, “Data can be used in this way not only across group companies, but also between different industries.”