The Inner Circle

Hey everyone,

I'm curious about how encryption affects the performance of cloud storage solutions. While encryption is essential for securing data, I've heard that it can introduce latency and increase CPU usage.

Some key questions:

• How significant is the performance hit when using encryption at rest vs. encryption in transit?
• Do different encryption methods (AES-256, homomorphic encryption, etc.) have varying impacts?
• Are there ways to optimize encrypted cloud storage to minimize slowdowns?

I would love to hear insights from those who have experience managing encrypted cloud storage. Are the trade-offs worth it, or do modern cloud providers handle encryption efficiently?

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Relying on Encryption at Rest (EAR) for production applications is not efficient, data must be decrypted every time to be used (CRUD), then encrypted again.  That operation is slow and has significant leakage.  We use Searchable Symmetrical Encryption (SSE) of Shredded Data, an under-determined system using non-linear functions.  In our SaaS operations for structured and unstructured data management in the financial industry, SSE added 80 Milliseconds to the existing SQL query.

Growing uses of SSE is replacing Archive EAR for the benefit of not having to decrypt but search while encrypted.  GenAI RAG integrations into critical data (PII, PHI, IP, OT).  SSE by design uses NIST AES 256 and Quantum when necessary.  Format Preserving Encryption is a NIST Standard where NIST has no current plans to standardize any Homomorphic Encryption solutions.  SSE and FPE are fast (Msecs) and HE is slow (Minutes).  This new use of searchable encryption is called "Encryption in Use".