Data Backup Digest

The need for online privacy and data security is greater than ever before. With more and more businesses flocking to online and cloud-based solutions to take care of their data storage needs, along with more threats from hackers and malicious users, it's a seemingly never-ending battle.

But one newly formed organized – the Confidential Computing Consortium – is hoping to change all of that. A joint venture that includes some of the biggest and most prominent names in all of IT, including Google, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Tencent, and more, the CCC hopes to bolster data security through encryption and other, similar methods.

Their first commitment of the CCC involves Intel's release of their Software Guard Extensions (SGX) toolkit into the open source community. In addition, Microsoft will provide their Open Enclave SDK and Red Hat is offering up their Enarx platform use by the CCC.

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the CCC will be governed through a series of standards and best practices that have yet to be established. All developers are encouraged to contribute to the open source projects as they see fit.

Jim Zemlin, executive director with the Linux Foundation, recently touted the importance of open source technologies by stating: "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. The Confidential Computing Consortium is a leading indicator of what’s to come for security in computing and will help define and build open technologies to support this trust infrastructure for data in use."

Todd Moore, vice president of open technology and developer advocacy with IBM, echoed these sentiments by saying: "IBM was one of the earliest companies to champion open source, and now aligned with Red Hat we are excited for the future. One of the emerging areas of interest to our IBM Cloud and Systems clients is Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). Combined with new open software projects like Enarx and OpenEnclave SDK, they hold the promise of making future workloads as secure as possible in the next chapter of cloud."

A brief statement, posted on the CCC's official website, reads: "CCC is a project community at the Linux Foundation dedicated to defining and accelerating the adoption of confidential computing. It will embody open governance and open collaboration that has aided the success of similarly ambitious efforts. The effort includes commitments from Alibaba Cloud, Arm, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Swisscom and Tencent."''

One notable name that is absent from this list includes Apple. Even though many of their systems use technology from Arm and even Intel, they have yet to pledge any sort of commitment to the CCC.

For more information on the Confidential Computing Consortium, including details on any of the latest news or breakthroughs, please visit their official website at {{https://confidentialcomputing.io/|confidentialcomputing.io/}}. To find out more about The Linux Foundation, the primary host of the CCC, head over to their official website at www.linuxfoundation.org.