Identity-Based Encryption | Email Encryption, Database Encryption and Key Management Solutions | Voltage Security

Information Encryption for Email, Files, Documents and Databases

Fundamentally, the reason to use encryption is to protect data so that only a specific person (for example, bob@b.com) or a machine (for example, www.voltage.com) can access it. However, until now, encryption techniques have relied on long, randomly generated keys that must be mapped to identities using digitally-signed documents, called certificates. The management of these certificates, and the need to fetch a certificate before encrypting to a person or machine, has made encryption very difficult.

Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) takes a completely new approach to the problem of encryption. IBE can use any arbitrary string as a public key, enabling data to be protected without the need for certificates. Protection is provided by a key server that controls the mapping of identities to decryption keys.

The design of an Identity-Based Encryption system was a long-standing open problem in cryptography. Voltage now offers a platform based on the first secure, practical IBE system, the Boneh-Franklin IBE Algorithm.

In 2008 NIST hosted a workshop to discuss the benefits and future of Identity-Based Encryption - click here to read the findings.

The IETF has issued the following three RFC’s:

1. RFC 5091, “Identity-Based Cryptography Standard (IBCS) #1: Supersingular Curve Implementations of the BF and BB1 Cryptosystems”, describes the mathematics underlying the Voltage Identity-Based Encryption™ (IBE) approach and how to implement Voltage's IBE cryptography.
2. RFC 5408, "Identity-Based Encryption Architecture and Supporting Data Structures," defines the components of a system that implements IBE and defines the protocols that the components use to operate securely.
3. RFC 5409, "Using the Boneh-Franklin and Boneh-Boyen Identity-Based Encryption Algorithms with the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS),"   describes how to use Voltage's IBE within the existing standards for email encryption.