Cloud computing has revolutionized data storage and processing by enabling on-demand access to shared resources. However, the delegation of sensitive data to third-party cloud servers raises significant privacy and security concerns. Homomorphic Encryption (HE) emerges as a compelling cryptographic solution that allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data without requiring decryption, ensuring that cloud providers never access plaintext information. This review paper provides a comprehensive examination of homomorphic encryption in the context of cloud computing. We trace the theoretical foundations from Rivest, Adleman, and Dertouzos's early concept in 1978 through Craig Gentry's landmark 2009 fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) construction, and survey subsequent advances including BGV, BFV, CKKS, and TFHE schemes. We analyse practical performance challenges, hardware acceleration strategies, and emerging hybrid architectures. Applications spanning healthcare, finance, machine learning inference, and secure multi-party computation are explored. Finally, we identify open research challenges and future directions in making HE viable for real-world cloud deployments.
SINGH et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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