Introduction
Newline Software was created with one goal in mind - ensure our customers can back up their files to our online backup and restore
service with 100% Data Privacy.
During our research, we realized there was a broader need for online data privacy beyond our backup
and restore application, Exact. OPTIC is the result of a three-year effort to provide a generalized technology solution so any developer can create
a customer solution with 100% Data Privacy in the cloud.
Exact is the first application to utilize OPTIC technology.
In a nutshell what OPTIC does is allow developers to securely query, write, and read encrypted data to and from any cloud data store.
What is unique about OPTIC is it can answer queries and return encrypted data without any knowledge of the data stored in the cloud.
To better understand this, consider how current secure applications store data on the cloud.
Typically they encrypt data with a private key and store the data as a 'blob' in the cloud, or a single large collection of data.
This does not allow granular access to or querying for the existence of data in the cloud.
Not having granular access is a problem because cloud applications need to create and manage local catalogs to reference encrypted data.
Newline Software solves this problem using its own advancements in homomorphic computing to provide granular access inside encrypted data.
OPTIC allows cloud applications to make requests through its Homomorphic Data Service (HDS) to query, write, and read data while it is encrypted.
Furthermore, Newline Software has developed a Homomorphic File System (HFS) that allows developers to create cloud applications that consume data in the form of files and directories.
For example, if a cloud application requests a file from HFS, HFS using OPTIC returns the file in encrypted form and decrypts it only after it is
safely on the user's computer.
Encrypted data stored in the cloud can only be decrypted by applications on the client device.
OPTIC is ideally suited for a wide range of Software as a Service (SAAS) applications, including:
- Distributed homomorphic storage
- Cloud backup and restore
- Cloud-based application storage (email, contacts, password lists)
- Cloud-based collaboration (calendars, project management, workflow systems)
OPTIC is the only technology suitable for developing secure cloud-based customer solutions with 100% Data Privacy.
OPTIC Operations
OPTIC Query
An OPTIC Query returns a unique OPTIC-Id for any given data stream for streams from 1 to 1M characters.
It can also be used to determine if an given data stream exists in the cloud.
The private OPTIC Key is used to create an OPTIC Query which is sent to the HDS.
The HDS returns the unique OPTIC-Id for the data if it exists, or returns a null (zero) id if the data does not exist.
OPTIC Write
An OPTIC Write stores encrypted data in the HDS.
Each time a write is performed, OPTIC sends an OPTIC Query to the HDS to determine if the data already exists in the HDS.
If the data does not exist, the data and OPTIC-Id are saved in the HDS, otherwise not data is sent, and just the Id is returned.
OPTIC Read
An OPTIC Read retrieves encrypted data from the HDS and decrypts the data using the private OPTIC Key.
Each time a read is performed, OPTIC queries the HDS for the encrypted data referenced by the unique OPTIC-Id provided from a previous OPTIC Query.