Enveil FAQs: Privacy Enhancing Technologies

When you’re solutioning around transformative technologies and leading the formation of an entirely new commercial market as we are, you’re bound to encounter some questions. Here are the answers to a few of our frequently asked questions.

If you’d like to see answers to more FAQs, check out our dedicated page.

What are Privacy Enhancing Technologies and how do you use them?

Privacy Enhancing Technologies, or PETs as they are sometimes called, are a powerful family of technologies that protect Data in Use, enhancing and preserving the security and privacy of data throughout its processing lifecycle. These technologies are transformational because the capabilities they deliver aren’t making current processes, systems, or workflows better; they are making something entirely new possible.

Our ZeroReveal solutions, which leverage several pillars of the PETs category including homomorphic encryption, secure multiparty computation, and trusted execution environments, make PETs practical, scalable, and performant for real business and mission use cases today. Data is the backbone of the digital economy and we enable organizations to utilize it for business purposes while ensuring privacy, security, and regulatory barriers are respected and their interests are protected.

Are PETs performant enough for commercial use?

Yes — in fact, commercial and government entities are using Privacy Enhancing Technologies operationally at scale today to solve real problems. While some PETs, namely homomorphic encryption, were once considered too slow to be practical for commercial use at scale, that is no longer the case. Advances in the underlying HE technology, as well as efficiencies relating to its use that we have pioneered, mean that HE can now operate at the speed of business for a number of use cases, alongside other PETs. Encrypted searches can be performed over hundreds of millions of data records and returned within seconds rather than days or even weeks (yes, it started out that slow).