Dispersed Cryptography and the Quotient Ring Transform

This paper describes a radically different privacy, security and integrity solution. Dispersed Cryptography converts the cloud from a security threat into a security asset by combining a standard stream cipher and the Quotient Ring Transform (QRT). The result is an integrated error correction/encryption algorithm. This encoding disperses data, breaking it into many smaller pieces and scattering them to different sites. No single site is critical; any can be lost without losing data. No single site can access data, even if the cryptovariable (secret key) is compromised. The resulting system is more flexible and seamlessly adds both data integrity and security. The underlying codes are linear, and therefore have homomorphic properties and may be used in coding based quantum resistant cryptography.