Roberto Tamassia Gives An Invited Talk On Searchable Encryption At Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency
- Posted by Jesse Polhemus
- on May 1, 2024
Late last year, Brown University’s Roberto Tamassia (Chair of the Department of Computer Science and James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor of Computer Science) gave an invited talk at the Italian National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN), the branch of the Italian government devoted to the protection of national interests in the field of cybersecurity. Reporting directly to Italy's Prime Minister, ACN is responsible for safeguarding Italy's security and resilience in cyberspace, preventing and mitigating cyber attacks, and promoting cybersecurity awareness and education in government, business, and society.
Invited by Professor Paolo Atzeni, ACN Director for Competence and Capacity Building, Roberto spoke about searchable encryption, a framework that combines algorithmic and cryptographic methods to enable a server to perform efficient computations on encrypted data without having access to the decryption key. Thus, the data outsourced by the client to the server remains encrypted not only at rest but also when accessed by applications. Roberto explained how searchable encryption is a fast-growing field in computer security research with significant potential for broad practical adoption by industry and government agencies. Roberto also mentioned recent results by his group on searchable encryption for data analytics.
The talk was followed by remarks from Bruno Frattasi, the General Director of the ACN, and Nunzia Ciardi, the organization’s Deputy General Director, about ACN’s commitment to following the latest developments in the field of cybersecurity and continuing to engage in conversations with international cybersecurity experts through invited talks and other collaboration initiatives.
Bernardo Palazzi, who splits his time between Providence and Rome as a Brown CS part-time faculty member and an advisor to ACN, was in the audience. He notes, “Roberto’s talk was the perfect example of interaction with internationally renowned academic experts that enables ACN to broaden its scientific interests and strengthen its understanding of emerging trends in cybersecurity.”
Image above from left to right: Paolo Atzeni, Bruno Frattasi, Roberto Tamassia, Nunzia Ciardi (photo from the event’s press release (in Italian) published by ACN).
For more information, please click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.
