Confidential computing services — What are they?

What confidential computing services are out there and why they are useful.

Introduction to confidential computing

Secure computing is the act of executing code in a trusted execution environment (TEEs) allowing increase security of code executed as the environment has to be trusted or in more technical terms attested. In this post we will cover two popular secure computing services. Highlighting some pros and cons of each and provide you with an overview of why you might want to consider secure computing.

Confidential computing background

Confidential computing is an industry term defined by the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) — a foundation dedicated to defining and accelerating the adoption of confidential computing. The CCC defines confidential computing as. The protection of data in use by performing computations in a hardware-based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE).

Attestation

Attestation is the feature that allows the below services to be TEEs. This means that the environment executing the code has verified its identity in some way.

With Nitro Enclaves The attestation process uses a series of measurements that are unique to an enclave…