What Is Confidential Computing? And What Role Does It Take In Data Partnerships?​

In today’s digital age, data is one of the most valuable assets. However, much of this data is sensitive and protected, whether it’s proprietary business information or personal data. From safeguarding personal data to ensuring the security of proprietary information, organizations across the globe face a significant challenge: how to extract valuable insights from sensitive data while keeping it secure and maintaining its privacy.
Confidential computing is a groundbreaking technology that can help solving this challenge: It enables the analysis of data without accessing the actual data, while providing hard proof that the data remains private. This method keeps data private and encrypted while in use, allowing computations to occur in a secure environment that only permits approved code and results.

What is Confidential Computing?

Confidential computing introduces a secure environment known as a trusted execution environment (TEE). This environment can be a physically separate part of a computer or a protected area within the computer’s main processor. The TEE is designed to run computations in an isolated and verifiable manner, ensuring that the data remains private.
Encrypting data at rest and in transit is standard practice, but confidential computing takes it a step further by keeping data encrypted while in use. This ensures that data remains private throughout its entire lifecycle.

Key Security Measures: Isolation and Verification

Two critical security measures underpin confidential computing: isolation and verification.
Isolation: The TEE keeps computations completely separate from other operations on the computer. The separation is so significant, such that even the operating system, system administrators, and individuals with physical access to the computer cannot access the information inside the TEE. This robust isolation dramatically increases trust between collaborating parties, especially in remote or cloud-based environments. Indeed, each of the hyperscalers has confidential-computing-enabled virtual machines available for use.
Verification: A TEE can provide a proof about its secure state by running a verification process dubbed attestation. In essence, the attestation process is comprised of gathering verifiable information by the hardware about the system state. The attestation process also involves the hardware manufacturer (like Intel or AMD) in the loop, which makes it extremely robust and difficult to compromise.

Real-World Applications

Confidential computing is not just a futuristic concept; it is already part of our daily lives. For example, mobile devices use TEEs to securely process your biometric data. Today, some of the most promising applications of confidential computing are designed to make the best use of sensitive data while protecting it. For example, Apple Intelligence uses confidential computing in its ‘Private Cloud Compute’ to build user-specific LLMs using the user’s sensitive data.

At Multyx, we harness the power of confidential computing to build trust and unlock the potential of data and AI applications previously deemed too risky due to privacy concerns.
Consider a scenario where multiple organizations wish to collaborate on sensitive data. Using Multyx, they can securely analyze data collectively, ensuring that only approved results are shared while the data itself remains inaccessible to non-owners. By ensuring both privacy and utility, confidential computing paves the way for innovations that were once hindered by mistrust and regulatory challenges.

Final Thoughts

Confidential computing is more than a technology; it’s a paradigm shift in how we approach data security and collaboration. As the demand for privacy and trust grows, businesses that embrace this paradigm shift will lead the way in unlocking the full value of their data while respecting the boundaries of privacy and trust. At Multyx, we’re proud to be at the forefront of this transformation, helping organizations turn challenges into opportunities through the power of confidential computing.

Ready to explore how confidential computing can revolutionize your business? Contact Multyx today to learn more.