Together with Gradiant, Scytl is in the development process of Black ICE HSM, the world´s most secure, private and auditable electronic voting system in the cloud. Co-financed by FEDER (Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional) and the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitivity, the program originated in 2016 and will finalize in 2018.
One of the objectives of the platform is to respond to the need of providing cryptographic hardware and data protection for fully secure and private electronic voting in the cloud. The new solution will deliver security protocols based on Hardware Secure Modules (HSMs) that will enable the storing of secret/private data from electronic voting systems in the cloud and to work with the data in a completely secure and private environment.
As stated by Jordi Puiggalí, CSO at Scytl “One of the key innovation factors of this project is the implementation of advanced cryptographic algorithms in HSM, something that HSM does not provide by default. The use of these advanced algorithms will allow the deployment of secure and auditable cryptographic voting protocols, even in cloud-deployed environments.” This new system will ensure users that their electronic voting is totally confidential and that even cloud service providers do not have access to sensitive data. The use of HSM devices with special protection (certified by The FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria EAL4 + standards) prevents any type of attack that could compromise cryptographic keys.
