Encryption & decryption using Deffie-Hellman algorithm

Abstract

The rapid digitization of healthcare systems has underscored the critical need for robust data security, particularly in safeguarding sensitive HL7 health data during transmission. This study addresses vulnerabilities in key exchange mechanisms, a cornerstone of data security, by implementing an enhanced Diffie-Hellman-based framework. The research employs the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) protocol, which consistently outperforms the traditional Diffie-Hellman (DH) algorithm across key performance metrics, such as key generation, encryption, and decryption times. Experimental results reveal that ECDH achieves key generation times of 0.2 ms (1024-bit) and 0.3 ms (2048-bit), significantly faster than DH’s respective times of 1.7 ms and 2.1 ms. Similarly, ECDH demonstrates superior efficiency in key exchange times, averaging 0.2–0.3 ms compared to DH’s 1.7–2.5 ms. These benchmarks confirm the computational efficiency of ECDH, making it particularly suitable for real-time healthcare applications. The methodology incorporates secure key exchange and data encryption by converting HL7 files to Base64 format, followed by encryption and decryption using securely exchanged keys. Validation experiments under varying conditions highlight the protocol's stability and scalability. Additionally, this research introduces algorithms and equations for performance metrics, ensuring reproducibility and rigor. A detailed analysis of sample data showcases the effectiveness of the proposed framework in maintaining data integrity and confidentiality. The findings emphasize the feasibility of integrating ECDH into healthcare environments, offering improved security with minimal computational overhead, and pave the way for future exploration in lightweight cryptographic solutions.