New algorithm for safer digital data
New Delhi(India Science Wire).
With the
ever-growing technology, cyber-attacks have become rampant. A team of
researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT Guwahati),
in collaboration with scientists from the University of Pardubice, Czech
Republic, is working towards developing indigenous algorithms that can protect
the Nation's digital data from cyber-attacks by advanced computers. The team
has also designed encryption architectures that can be used to protect
sensitive health data that is transmitted through the internet.
"It has become indispensable to design new encryption
schemes that can resist both quantum computer- as well as classical
computer-based attacks,"says Dr. GauravTrivedi, Associate Professor,
Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, IIT Guwahati. This need
has given rise to a new field of research, called Post-Quantum Cryptography
(PQC), and state-of-art research teams all over the world, such as the one at
IIT Guwahati, have been working on developing algorithms to secure data from
attacks by advanced computers.
The team has developed and designed various PQC-based
encryption algorithms and indigenous soft IPs which can be integrated into
Systems-on-Chip (SoC) to protect them from cyber-attacks. These algorithms and
IPs would enable critical data such as national security data and citizen
information to be under unbreakable lock-and-key, thereby enhancing the safety
of our nation against cyber-attacks.
The team has also worked towards enhancing data security in
the healthcare sector that is increasingly using the Internet-of-Things (IoT)
to cater to the needs of the country. IoT healthcare aids in the real-time
diagnosis of diseases by keeping a patient digitally connected to a medical
expert 24*7, thus avoiding the visits and admissions in the hospital, a
facility particularly critical in these pandemic times. For example, wearable
health sensors, such as ECG devices, can automatically transmit data to the
health care provider, but the transmitted data must be encrypted to prevent
intentional or accidental modifications to it, which could affect diagnosis and
treatment.
"We have developed an area- and power-efficient
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) architecture that can encrypt and decrypt
ECG data for transmission across the Internet. This is also suitable for low
power IoT applications," observes Dr. Trivedi.
Speaking about the work done by Dr. Trivedi's team, Prof.
T.G. Sitharam, Director, IIT Guwahati, said, "Both these electronic
devices are the results of the joint efforts of IIT Guwahati and the University
of Pardubice with whom we have successful collaboration for the past nine
years. These devices are in-line with India's vision of self-reliance and
independence from foreign technology".
The team led by Dr. GauravTrivedi, includes Prof
SrinivasanKrishnaswamy, research scholars Bikram Paul, UddipanaDowerah, Tarun
Kumar Yadav, Balbir Singh, AbhishekAgrawal, MeenaliJanveja, and Souradip Pal
from IIT Guwahati. Prof ZdenekNemec and Prof Jan Pidanic from the University of
Pardubice.
The team's work has been published in the proceedings of the
IEEE International Conference Radioelektronika (RADIOELEKTRONIKA).
(India Science Wire)
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