This ToppForsk@IE:Cryptography group is a joint collaboration between the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology (IIK) and the Department of Mathematical Sciences (IMF) at NTNU.

Public-key cryptography is crucial to securing digital communication. The currently deployed key- exchange and digital signature schemes are based on mathematical assumptions that can be broken by quantum computers, and recent developments in quantum computing have made a transition to quantum safe algorithms urgent. There is thus a need to design, analyze, and implement new cryptographic algorithms to form the backbone of our digital infrastructure in the coming years.

Increased enterprise computing power and availability of data centers have given us new and innovative solutions such as cloud storage and big data analytics, and more recently advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. The underlying data sets often contain personal data, and in order to protect privacy, data protection regulations govern the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal data. To build the tools and systems our digital society needs while remaining compliant with data protection regulations, we need new privacy-preserving technologies based on cryptographic techniques.

The main research focus of this group spanning at least the next four years will be on quantum safe and privacy-preserving cryptography to solve the above challenges. We plan to work on the five following interlocking research areas within quantum safe and privacy-preserving cryptography:

• Threshold cryptography (lead: Silde)

• Fully homomorphic encryption (lead: Costache)

• Privacy-preserving machine learning (lead: Park) 

• Key exchange (lead: Gjøsteen) 

• Zero-knowledge proofs (lead: Silde and Gjøsteen)