Guidelines for Secure Process Control: Harnessing the Power of Homomorphic Encryption and State Feedback Control

The paper presents applications of homomorphic cryptographic schemes in process control. Homomorphic encryption is a particular type of encryption that allows performing mathematical operations over encrypted data. Therefore the user can use third-party services as controllers without revealing any vulnerable information, like process data. Homomorphic properties make it possible to perform data aggregation or evaluate control actions without having any knowledge about the process data. Our paper explores two fully homomorphic cryptographic schemes, namely Brakerski/Fan-Vercauteren (BFV) and Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song (CKKS) cryptosystems. Each scheme is briefly described with its advantages and drawbacks, conditions, and applications. We present a case study involving hl linear-quadratic (LQ) control strategy implemented in an encrypted setup. This serves for comparison and a step-by-step guide for implementing encrypted process control.