Businesses put a lot of effort into securing data with stringent security and privacy policies. However, data theft, misuse, and loss concern looms overhead. Many techniques exist for safeguarding data at rest and during transit, but one area severely overlooked is analytics, leading to the concept of confidential computing.
Interested in the new technology and its applications in data security for businesses? Let’s explore -
Confidential Computing – A Primer
Despite the numerous security and privacy measures today’s businesses take to safeguard data, there is still a lot of concern about data theft, misuse, and loss. While several techniques are being used to protect data at rest and in transit, there is still a gap in securing data in the processing stage.
Confidential computing is a cloud computing technology that protects data while it is being processed. It uses encryption keys and strong access control measures to ensure end-to-end data security in the cloud.
As data gets processed, its contents and processing techniques are inaccessible to everyone, including the cloud provider. If any malware attempts to access the encryption keys, it is denied access, thus protecting the data being analyzed.
Confidential Computing – Reasons Behind its Popularity
In early 2025, hackers infiltrated Oracle Cloud and stole sensitive patient data. With over 6 million Oracle Cloud records and more than 140,000 tenants at stake, this incident is just one of the many rampant across the globe – demanding stronger data protection measures.
Confidential computing enables businesses to protect their data with stronger encryption measures. It helps them make better choices for protecting their workloads across multi-cloud environments.
Confidential Computing – The Working
As hackers utilize several modern and sophisticated techniques to steal and exploit sensitive data, the consequences for businesses are many, from hefty legal fines to poor business reputation and lost customer trust.
In an age where artificial intelligence models are being trained on millions of terabytes of data, data security via confidential computing is key!
The technology uses a trusted, hardware-based execution environment (TEE) with embedded encryption keys accessible only to authorized application code. These keys ensure data is invisible to the operating system, the hypervisor, and compute stack resources. They also prevent unauthorized access or modification of applications and data while in use, thereby increasing the security level of organizations that manage sensitive and regulated data.
Confidential Computing – The Business Need
With the increasing reliance on public and hybrid clouds, maintaining data security and privacy is critical. Confidential computing ensures data stored in the cloud is protected 24/7 and remains confidential.
Although data has always been protected at rest and during transit, confidential computing safeguards data while it is being processed – thus ensuring protection at every stage of the lifecycle.
Confidential Computing – Top Benefits
As datasets grow, there is increasing scrutiny of how data is protected. Confidential computing offers several benefits to businesses, including:
- Sensitive workload protection, especially as they move from on-premises computing environments to modern cloud ecosystems.
- Better cloud collaboration, even in public cloud environments, without worrying about data privacy and confidentiality.
- Stronger data encryption without the hassle of making code changes to applications or compromising on performance.
- Improved data control in a trusted execution environment by specifying the hardware and software with access to data and code.
- Unauthorized access prevention by limiting access to sensitive business and customer data.
Confidential computing is extremely useful for organizations that handle sensitive data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), financial data, or health information. It allows them to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of data, not just at rest and transit but also during computation.
Confidential Computing – Most Common Use Cases
Here are some everyday use cases:
- Medical device companies that need to meet stringent security and software quality requirements can safeguard sensitive personal health information against unauthorized access.
- Financial services companies can securely process and analyze data, detect and prevent fraudulent activities, and protect sensitive information.
- Legal firms can securely store and analyze legal and investigative records, maintaining their integrity and confidentiality for legal proceedings.
- Customer service organizations can uncover critical behavioral data without compromising privacy or exposing personal information.
- Retail firms can personalize product recommendations without exposing sensitive customer information to third parties.
The Confidential Computing Consortium
The Confidential Computing Consortium is a group of hardware vendors, cloud providers, and software developers. These entities work together to accelerate the adoption of Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technologies and standards. Consortium members collaborate on open-source tools, frameworks, and standards to improve data security and privacy.
Redefining Data Privacy and Security for Tomorrow
As AI and analytical models collect massive volumes of data, securing that data against unauthorized access and misuse is imperative. Confidential computing allows a business to secure data and enable compliance with ever-evolving privacy regulations.
Using trusted execution environments, a business can complete secure computations and isolate data from unauthorized access by software, administrators, or other tenants on a shared infrastructure.
