Fortanix Security Software

Confidential Data Search

An industry-first solution for searching regulated data in encrypted databases at scale

Overview

When it comes to analyzing sensitive data such as financial or medical datasets, organizations have to compromise on security or performance. Current solutions are predominantly based on complex and expensive cryptographic technologies such as homomorphic encryption, or proprietary databases. Such computationally intensive approaches can be 1,000 to 1,000,000 times slower than standard non-encrypted databases and often require customized hardware to alleviate the delay.

Aside from the performance challenges, current mathematical technologies provide a severely restricted scope of search parameters, making them impractical beyond strict numerical searches. In addition, these technologies require additional solutions to police the different levels of access, as mandated by security best practices and regulations.

Fortanix Solution

Fortanix Confidential Data Search uses the power of confidential computing to replicate standard databases in a secure enclave, protecting the data-in-use while the database is decrypted. In contrast to homomorphic encryption, regular database queries produce faster results, especially when the query granularity increases, as there are fewer records to analyze. With limited computational demand, Confidential Data Search scales for large and complex data sets in the Terabyte order size.

By offering a standard database environment, such as SQL, with an unlimited search language scope, that any data analyst is familiar with, organizations can rapidly deploy their data-driven initiatives. Users do not need to convert their datasets to new complex proprietary database formats or deploy proprietary agents. In addition, the solution uses proven encryption standards for increased trustworthiness, including readiness for post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

Benefits

Scalable and compliant search

Combining the speed of regular database searches with the transparency and security of Confidential Computing helps regulated verticals such as Finance and Healthcare to leverage their data and increase their value.

Unrestricted environment and proven technology

With an unrestricted and familiar database search environment, such as SQL, enables a wide selection of data analysts to retrieve more accurate results, faster. Confidential Computing can use hardware platforms based on Intel, AMD, or use cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure ACI, and Amazon AWS Nitro. Fortanix supports industry-standard encryption technologies, including post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms.

Lower TCO

Confidential Data Search uses commodity databases and hardware. The secure trusted execution environments (TEEs) are consumed as a cloud service, so customers only need to pay for what they actually use.