Cryptographically secure multiparty evaluation of system reliability

Abstract

The precise design of a system may be considered a trade secret which should be protected, whilst at the same time component manufacturers are sometimes reluctant to release full test data (perhaps only providing mean time to failure data). In this situation it seems impractical to both produce an accurate reliability assessment and satisfy all parties' privacy requirements. However, we present recent developments in cryptography which, when combined with the recently developed survival signature in reliability theory, allows almost total privacy to be maintained in a cryptographically strong manner in precisely this setting. Thus, the system designer does not have to reveal their trade secret design and the component manufacturer can retain component test data in-house.