A Review of Homomorphic Encryption and its Applications

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) enables meaningful computations on encrypted data without decrypting it. Thus, privacy concerns can be addressed in a satisfactory manner by encrypting data using the homomorphic cryptosystem before uploading the data to a cloud service provider. Recent years have witnessed rapid progress of (HE) development in theory and practice. However, current literature still lacks a thorough review on these new developments and their applications. This paper guides the reader through a journey of these developments by reviewing the state of the art of homomorphic cryptosystems and discussing their advantages, disadvantages as well as applicability. In addition, this work presents the privacy preserving applications of homomorphic cryptosystems in the field of private information retrieval, genomic data, cloud computing and participatory sensing. Moreover, this review further discusses open issues of such applications and future research trends.