Welcome to The Sugar Beet
A new community blog on applied secure computation.
When talking to researchers and industry, we found a shared motivation to raise awareness on the value of secure computation. Privacy, security and ethics of technology have naturally become household topics in a time in which data leaks, privacy violations and disinformation shape society.
We are an informal group of writers from cryptography: researchers, engineers, practitioners from organizations and research institutions working on secret sharing, secure multi-party computation (MPC), trusted computation, distributed learning, homomorphic encryption and related technologies.
The commonality among these technologies is that they enable computation with strong security and privacy safeguards “by design”, while minimizing trust in third parties. (The topic of security assumptions and trust is a complex one that we will likely dedicate a separate post on.)
The name Sugar Beet is chosen because of its reference to the first case of applied MPC at scale: A collaboration between Danish industry players, computer scientists and economists set up an exchange to trade production rights among sugar beet growers in Denmark. Opting for a novel paradigm, the role of auctioneer was virtualized, instead of granting the role of auctioneer to one entity. This approach solved for cost-efficiency, confidentiality, alignment of interests and market players’ trust in the new model. (We strongly recommend the site of Partisia and a presentation by Toft for more background on this milestone.)
The Danish sugar beet story is one of many new stories that will be written as demand for ethical use of data increases and the cost of implementing privacy decreases. We look forward to capture those stories for you and to provide insights into their tradeoffs.
We choose Medium as blogging platform because of its sizeable and tech savvy reader base: we believe this is the kind of audience that could benefit from our insights and help us raise awareness.
We look forward to inform you about secure computation, and to build a community together. Please let us know if you would like to participate. We are open for collaborators who are motivated to raise awareness on secure computation and like to join as writer or editor.
Best regards,
Researchers and engineers in cryptography from Bar-Ilan University, Cosmian, CWI, Enigma, Galois Inc., KU Leuven, the MPC Alliance, Partisia, Roseman Labs, Sepior, TNO, TU Eindhoven, Unbound and ZenGo (and hopefully more soon)
Links to contributors
Bar-Ilan University: cyber.biu.ac.il
Cosmian: cosmian.com
CWI: cwi.nl
Enigma: enigma.co
Galois: galois.com
KU Leuven: esat.kuleuven.be/cosic
MPC Alliance: mpcalliance.org
Partisia: partisia.com
Roseman Labs: rosemanlabs.com
Sepior: sepior.com
TNO: tno.nl
TU Eindhoven: win.tue.nl/eipsi
Unbound: unboundtech.com
ZenGo: zengo.com
On copyright and liability (terms & conditions)
All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only.
While we strive to be as accurate as possible, the editors and owners of the Sugar Beet blog cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of information on this blog or found by following a link, and will not be liable from the display or use of this information nor for any errors or omissions.
The Sugar Beet respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that material located on or linked by the Sugar Beet violates your copyright, you are encouraged to notify us.
Copyright and intellectual property from writers on the Sugar Beet remain theirs. Trademarks and graphics used by writers may be their trademarks or those of third parties. Visiting the Sugar Beet blog grants you no right or license to reproduce any third-party trademarks.
These terms and conditions are subject to change at any time and without notice.
