New Confidential Computing Consortium Includes Google, Intel, Microsoft

The Linux Foundation today announced plans to form the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) — a nonprofit organization of hardware vendors, cloud providers, developers, open source experts, and academics dedicated to defining and driving adoption of confidential computing.

Modern approaches to cloud computing address data at rest and in transit. Encrypting data at rest is considered the next and most difficult step to fully encrypting the life cycle of sensitive data. Confidential computing will let encrypted data be processed in memory without sharing it with the rest of the system, reducing exposure and giving users more control and transparency.

Tech giants committed to the initiative include Alibaba, Arm, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Swisscom, and Tencent. Organizations involved with the CCC will work to drive the confidential computing market, collaborate on technical and regulatory standards, and build open source tools to create a space for the development of trusted execution environments (TEE). The CCC will also serve as a foundation for education and outreach projects.

Some of these companies plan to make open source project contributions to the CCC, including Intel's Software Guard Extensions SDK, Microsoft Open Enclave SDK, and Red Hat Enarx. A proposed structure for the consortium will have a governing board, technical advisory council, and separate technical oversight for each of its technical projects.

"The earliest work on technologies that have the ability to transform an industry is often done in collaboration across the industry and with open source technologies," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation, in a statement on today's news.

Read more details here.

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