What is Confidential Computing

Confidential computing refers to a set of technologies and practices that protect sensitive data and computations even when processed in untrusted environments. Traditional computing models assume data is secure within trusted environments like data centers or cloud servers. Confidential computing recognizes that these trusted environments can still be vulnerable to various threats, such as insider attacks, external breaches, or malicious actors with privileged access.

Confidential computing utilizes hardware-based security features to create isolated enclaves where sensitive data can be processed securely. These enclaves provide a protected execution environment, shielding the data and computations from unauthorized access or tampering, even by the underlying operating system or hypervisor.

By leveraging confidential computing, it becomes feasible to encapsulate the infrastructure, reducing the risk of infiltration into the control plane or worker nodes. This cryptographic isolation substantially benefits Cloud Service Providers, empowering them to safeguard their control plane and clients' workloads against various threats. These threats include the growing number of cloud vulnerabilities (as documented in the Cloud Vulnerability Database), misconfigurations, malicious actors, and errors made by customers.

Organizations can safely operate on sensitive data in untrusted environments, enabling secure data processing, analysis, and storage while maintaining confidentiality and integrity. This technology has broad applications, ranging from protecting intellectual property and privacy-sensitive information to facilitating secure multi-party computation and enabling secure machine learning in collaborative environments.