technologyfiesta.blogg.se

Before data can be processed by an application, data must be encrypted in memory. This leaves the data open to malicious exploits such as memory dumps, root-user compromises, and other malicious attacks.

Confidential computing can solve this issue by leveraging a hardware-based trusted execution environment, or TEE, which is an enclave that is secure within a CPU. The TEE is protected by embedded encryption keys. The embedded attestation mechanisms ensure that the keys are accessible only to authorized application code only. The TEE will stop any computation if malware or other unauthorized code attempts to gain access to the keys.

This permits sensitive data to be stored in memory until the application requires the TEE to decrypt it. The information is encrypted and is accessible to the operating system (or hypervisor, in the case of a virtual machine) as well as the other computing stack resources as well as to the cloud provider's employees.

Why confidential computing?

to protect sensitive data when it is being used -- and to enhance cloud computing benefits for sensitive tasks. By combining encryption of data during transit and in rest with the exclusive control of keys AWS Nitro Enclaves secure cloud computing removes the biggest obstacle to data sets with sensitive information and workloads moving from an expensive and inflexible on-premises IT infrastructure to a modern, more flexible cloud platform.

To protect intellectual property: confidential cloud software isn't just for data protection. TEE can be used to protect business algorithmic logic, machine learning algorithms as well as entire applications.

To collaborate securely with partners on new cloud solutions. One company can make use of its confidential data to combine with the calculations of another company to develop new solutions. Each company is not required to divulge any intellectual property or data that it doesn't want.

Edge computing can be utilized to secure data at the edge. It is a distributed computing framework which connects enterprise apps with data sources like IoT devices and local edge servers. When the framework is utilized as part of distributed cloud patterns, the data and application on edge nodes can be secured with secure computing.

Confidential Computing Consortium

In 2019, a group of CPU manufacturers, cloud service providers and software companies -including Alibaba, AMD, Baidu, Fortanix, Google, IBM/Red Hat(r), Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Swisscom, Tencent and VMware -have formed the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) (link is outside of IBM), under the auspices of The Linux Foundation.

The CCC's goals are to set industry-wide standards in confidential computing as well as to support the development of open-source confidential computing tools. Open Enclave SDK (Red Hat Enarx) and Red Hat Enarx are two of the Consortium's earliest open-source projects. These projects permit developers to build applications that can run on any TEE platform, without any modifications. You may get additionalinformation about Azure confidential computing by browsing what is an AWS Nitro Enclave site.

However, some of today's most popular technology for confidential computing were developed by member companies before the formation of the Consortium. Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions) which allows Intel Xeon CPU platforms to run TEEs, is available since 2016. In the year 2018, IBM made confidential computing accessible to all users by introducing IBM Cloud(r] Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, and IBM Cloud(r[ Data Shield products.