The Fog, a New Encrypted Cloud Platform, Rolls In into the cloud

Good news! The cloud is getting foggy! 😊

"Niobium Microsystems is a technology company based in Dayton, Ohio, specializing in Zero Trust Computing through dedicated hardware accelerators for Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)." (Google AI)

"... Launched in early April by chip startup Niobium, the Fog is an encrypted cloud platform. It follows a client-server architecture, where a person or organization (the client) can encrypt data or workloads locally using their own private keys and deploy the encrypted data or workloads to the Fog (the server) without sharing their keys. These private keys remain with data owners, and only they can decrypt any results from the platform.

Much as actual fog obscures everything it envelops, so does the encrypted cloud platform named after it. ...

“The data in our cloud will never be exposed—it’s always encrypted,” says John Barrus, vice president of product at Niobium. “It’s a new category of cloud.” ..."

New Cloud Platform Uses Fully Homomorphic Encryption - IEEE Spectrum "It keeps data encrypted all the time—even while computing"

Protecting biological assets at the genetic level: New DNA encryption protects engineered cells from within

Amazing stuff! In the future, hopefully AI will play the role of the red team in this iterative process to improve the encryption etc.!

"... a team ... researchers present a new approach to genetically securing precious biological material. They created a genetic combination lock in which the locking or encryption process scrambled the DNA of a cell so that its important instructions were non-functional and couldn't be easily read or used. ..."

From the abstract:

"The protection of high-value cell lines (assets) relies on physical security by limiting access to samples. We present a cybersecurity-inspired platform that protects biological assets at the genetic level. This technology uses a permutation lock design where an asset can only be decrypted using an authentication code r from a search space composed of n objects on a defined keypad.

Here, the genetic asset is designed as a scrambled DNA sequence, and the code is a temporal pattern of small molecules that regulate sets of recombinases that can unscramble a DNA sequence into the desired final sequence.

In this work, a “blue team” designed and built an encrypted (scrambled) DNA sequence, and a “red team” sought to break the code through an ethical hacking exercise. Two iterations of testing revealed a 0.2% (2 in 990) chance of gaining access to the asset by random search, which is on par with the theoretical goal of 0.1% (1 in 990).

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Hackers meet their match: New DNA encryption protects engineered cells from within

Protecting cells at the genetic level and simulating unauthorized access via a biohackathon (open access)

Fig. 1. Biological security scenario “biohackathon” for designing, building, testing, and learning.

Fig. 2. Illustration of biological (genetic) asset encryption to decryption and nPr object engineering.