By Kelsey Atherton on March 11, 2021 at 11:15 AM Keeping data encrypted as it is processed could mitigate the harm from cyber intrusions, even by determined adversaries. ALBUQUERQUE: This week, DARPA announced the award of several contracts that will let computers process encrypted data, instead of having to decrypt it prior to processing. That could drastically improve the security and functionality of cloud-based processing for the military, because data won’t have to switch constantly between being protected encrypted forms and vulnerable decrypted ones. On March 8, DARPA announced the award of contracts to four research teams for the Under the Data Protection in Virtual Environments (DPRIVE) program. These teams will be led by Duality Technologies, Galois, SRI International, and Intel Federal, and will each be responsible for developing both the hardware and the software that allows for encrypted processing at speed.