What Is Homomorphic Encryption?

Homomorphic Encryption — a form of encryption that allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data without decrypting it first.

With homomorphic encryption, a party can run a calculation on data they cannot actually read, and the (still-encrypted) result decrypts to the correct answer. It is one of the more powerful privacy-enhancing technologies for AI — enabling analysis of sensitive data while it stays encrypted — though it remains computationally expensive for large workloads.

Source: NIST; cryptographic research