Encryption in use
At this point, we understand the concept of protecting data using encryption in transit and encryption at rest. There is still one place we need to protect data: while the data is being used in the server’s memory – that is, encryption in use when an application requires access to the decryption key.
This is where confidential computing comes into the picture.
Confidential computing safeguards active data by executing computations within a verified, hardware-based trusted execution environment (TEE). These TEEs create secure, isolated spaces that block unauthorized access or alteration of applications and data during processing.
Different cloud providers implement the concept of confidential computing slightly differently, but at the end of the day, the concept is the same – attestation of access requests to encryption keys, at the hardware level (i.e., CPU), for protecting sensitive data (such as PII, financial data, and more).
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