Enterprises are changing the way they address risk management today in light of an increase in cybersecurity threats, including new mathematical approaches and rapidly developing quantum compute technologies. Exploding data volumes only add to the issues; with more data moving between sensor, edge, core and cloud, secure encryption is more important than ever.
The one-time pad (OTP) is the only mathematically proven, unconditionally secure symmetric encryption algorithm. Previously, it’s remained impractical for enterprise use at scale, but a revolutionary solution has arrived: OTP-inspired encryption made possible with the help of secure geometric compression.
Secure Geometric Compression for Scalable One-Time Pad Encryption
The one-time pad, also known as the “Vernam Cipher,” emerged in 1917 when AT&T Bell Labs engineer Gilbert Sanford Vernam and his colleague Joseph Mauborgne co-developed a cipher that combined plaintext with a stream of random numbers of equal length, intended for one-time use, and providing perfect secrecy
OTP was soon leveraged as an important weapon of 20th century espionage — single-use OTP keys were distributed on physical pads of paper during World War II and the Cold War.
In the digital age, the days of the physical transfer of key data to a decryption point are gone. Today’s enterprise needs to protect a high volume of large digital data files in motion. OTP’s use at enterprise scale has been hampered for this reason — its historical properties of having a key size at least equal to the data size has made it impractical for commercial adoption.
The question becomes: when protecting data in motion, how do we plant an OTP key at both the originating (encryption) and receiving (decryption) ends? And even when the data is at rest, how can we make OTP key management practical when it traditionally necessitates twice the volume of data?
Now there is a way to solve this age-old problem of massive key size, one that can deliver a significant reduction in data size prior to OTP encryption, and it has to do with secure geometric compression.
Secure geometric compression is a new breakthrough form of lossless compression using geometric math, applied to a high-quality OTP key — and key quality matters more than ever. Shor’s algorithm has proven the vulnerabilities in the keys of today that are the product of prime numbers and contain hidden, repeating patterns.
So, the perfect secrecy of OTP starts with generating a secret, irrational, high-entropy number that cannot be factored. Next, the non-repeating, non-terminating mantissa of that number — the series of numerals to the right of the decimal point — becomes the OTP key. The mantissa starts with a digit determined by a special secret offset. Only knowing this sizable key from start to finish, plus the special offset factor, can lead to decryption.
Next — how to avoid having to transmit entire, large-size OTP keys from one locale to another. A pair of shared short secrets, relatively small parcels of data, is securely exchanged. Authorized parties at each end of a transaction then use the data to reconstitute identical OTP keys independently, thereby reversing the encryption process in mirror fashion and decrypting the file. In essence this short shared secret is the key to the key — and secure geometric compression makes it possible.
This methodology solves the challenge of distributing an OTP key in a symmetric private-key situation, thus retiring the single biggest barrier to enterprise deployment of OTP at scale — a game-changer in the realm of information security, and a paradigm shift on the road to perfect secrecy
Today’s enterprise needs to protect far more data, and more diligently than ever before. Old cryptography solutions are becoming dangerously insufficient. It’s time for a next-generation encryption solution that provides high-value, quantum-resistant security and anticipates future data volumes and system complexity. The future of cryptography lies with the gold standard, the one-time pad, made practical for the enterprise.
OTP Made Practical for the Enterprise
Businesses can start taking advantage now of the superior security OTP provides with Theon Technology. Theon delivers the highest level of digital encryption that is practical for widespread enterprise deployment.
The TheonSDK™ Software Development Toolkit offers our OTP-inspired encryption tools for developers to integrate into their applications. It includes: TheonRNG™, our Random Number Generator that generates higher entropy random numbers, providing the foundation of true security. TheonEncrypt™ encryption offers a unique approach that enables, for the first time, commercial viability of the one-time pad, and quantum-proof encryption for both data at-rest and in-flight. Our secure geometric compression delivers our revolutionary OTP-inspired encryption at a fraction of usual data requirements. And, because TheonEncrypt™ is a software approach, it drives flexibility across deployment models for a wide range of solutions in almost every industry and use case.
OTP has finally been made practical for the enterprise, a breakthrough well-timed for today’s formidable cybersecurity challenges.
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Secure the best for your organization’s data security needs — Contact a Theon expert to get started with revolutionary, enterprise-ready OTP-inspired encryption. We also have free eBooks available for download, including our latest, The Secure Enterprise Communication Handbook, which offers an overview of everything decision makers need to know to prepare a secure communication strategy.