What is Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)?

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is a form of encryption used in computer science that allows users to perform computations on data without first decrypting it. Decrypting sensitive data makes it susceptible to potential privacy and confidentiality breaches that could result in data theft and misuse by malicious third-party actors. FHE mitigates this problem and can be used for many purposes in the blockchain ecosystem, including the preservation of sensitive healthcare data, privacy-preserving outsourced storage and computation via cloud computing environments, and related technology. FHE often works in unison with Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMC) and other privacy-preserving cryptographic primitives.