Confidential Computing

Azure Confidential Computing comprises several Azure offerings including Azure VM instance types, confidential containers, and open source frameworks. Collectively, they are Microsoft’s approach to meeting confidential computing requirements, a growing industrywide initiative.

Confidential Computing extends traditional data protection strategies that focus on protecting data at rest (encrypted on disk or in a database) or data in motion. Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a good example of in-motion data protection because it is used to ensure data communications are secure by applying encryption to data while it is in transit. By contrast, Confidential Computing protects data “in use,” that is, the data remains encrypted in memory and is only decrypted as it is loaded into the CPU.

Service Overview 

Azure Confidential Computing offerings include the following:

VM Instance Types 

Microsoft is deploying fully encrypted Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in Azure VM instance types supporting