Secure Computation Outsourcing of Genome-Wide Association Studies Using Homomorphic Encryption

Abstract

One of the major problems in genomic research is the delivery of necessary compu- tational power to process extremely large genomic datasets. While cloud comput- ing provides the computing resources needed for such a scenario, the outsourcing of data processing raises a broad range of security and privacy issues as genomic data contain highly sensitive information. This study provides a cryptographic solu- tion to the problem using Paillier scheme. We developed a GWAS computing tool that uses a third-party server to perform genomic computations over encrypted genomic datasets without requiring the decryption key or having any interaction with the data owner; thus preserving the privacy of genomic data.