Ant Group’s Privacy-Preserving Computation Framework Becomes Open Source

July 04, 2022 at 04:29 AM EDT

Ant Group today announced that its privacy-preserving Computation Framework (or the “Framework”) becomes open source, aiming to make the technologies more accessible to global developers and speed up the Framework’s application in various scenarios.

The Framework is designed to address pain points in multi-party collaboration on information flows. It integrates a range of Ant Group’s industry-leading privacy computing technologies and covers the whole information life cycle, including Secure Multi-Party Computation, Differential Privacy, Homomorphic Encryption and others.

“It is costly for developers to start from scratch as there are many fundamental technologies involved in the privacy-preserving computing process. Now, with Ant’s open-source framework, developers can build their solutions and projects by using our fundamental technologies as the building blocks, which can further their research with a more simplified process and lower costs,” said Lei Wang, General Manager of the Privacy Computing Department of Ant Group.

Ant Group and the China Computer Federation also officially launched the “CCF-Ant Group Privacy Computing Special Fund” (or the “Fund”) today. The Fund will initially invest over US$ 600,000 to support cutting-edge research in the fields of privacy computing, such as Post-Quantum Multi-Party Computation, Security of Open Source Privacy Computing Platform and others. The Fund is available to researchers worldwide now.

“Ant is willing to share our resources and innovations with other industry players and explore the value of privacy computing technologies together,” said Tao Wei, Vice President and the Chief Information Security Officer at Ant Group.

The demand for privacy preserving computation continues to grow as the world becomes increasingly digital. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of large organizations will use at least one Privacy-Enhancing Computation technique in analytics, business intelligence and/or cloud computing.

Ant Group has always been exploring technological innovation in privacy-preserving computation. In 2022, Ant Group tops the list of patent applications for privacy-preserving computation technologies, with 1,152 patent applications.

Ant Group’s privacy preserving computation framework is available as an open-source on GitHub here.

About Ant Group

Ant Group aims to create the infrastructure and platform to support the digital transformation of the service industry. We strive to enable all consumers and small and micro businesses to have equal access to financial and other services that are inclusive, green and sustainable.