What is Confidential Computing?

Understanding Confidential Computing

Confidential Computing addresses one of the last unprotected states of data in modern computing—data that's actively being processed in memory. Traditional security controls protect data at rest through encryption and data in transit through secure protocols, but data must typically be decrypted to be processed, creating a potential exposure point. Confidential Computing protects this vulnerable phase by processing sensitive data within secure enclaves—hardware-based trusted execution environments isolated from the operating system, hypervisor, and other applications. These enclaves enable organizations to run sensitive workloads in otherwise untrusted environments like public clouds, ensuring that even cloud providers with administrative access cannot access unencrypted data. Common implementations leverage technologies like Intel SGX, AMD SEV, or ARM TrustZone to create these protected execution environments. While powerful, adoption presents challenges around performance impact, application compatibility (software often requires modification to leverage enclaves), and attestation (verifying that code is actually running within a genuine secure environment). Organizations typically begin with focused implementations protecting their most sensitive workloads before broader adoption.