How do you make sure sensitive computing stays confidential?
In this What That Means video, Camille talks with Intel® Trust Authority with Nikhil Deshpande, its General Manager, and Raghu Yeluri, its Chief Architect. They get into Intel® Trust Authority as a secure third-party solution for attestation and confidential computing, as well as how it’s being implemented today and how it might evolve.
Exploring Intel® Trust Authority with Nikhil
Camille has Nikhil to give an overview of Intel® Trust Authority, its applications, and the trajectory it could take following its inaugural launch. Nikhil notes that the main objective is to offer standalone security assurance at scale, applicable across diverse infrastructures and sectors. Intel® Trust Authority enhances confidential computing by affirming the security of environments where sensitive data is stored. He also points out the various sectors that stand to gain from the solution—these include finance, healthcare, security solutions, and governmental organizations. Looking ahead, Nikhil likens its adoption to the addition of the “S” in “HTTPS,” foreseeing a future where all computing is confidential, particularly as AI increasingly operates across both cloud and edge computing.
Deploying Intel® Trust Authority for Secure Attestation and Confidential Computing with Raghu
Camille and Raghu delve into the motivation behind the creation of Intel® Trust Authority, the attestation alternatives that existed before its emergence, and what adopting it entails. For organizations handling sensitive data or intricate AI models, the necessity for robust security against data leaks, IP theft, and regulatory non-compliance is crucial. Intel® Trust Authority serves as an answer to these challenges, especially when demonstrating truly confidential computing environments to auditors and secure monitoring systems.
Before Intel® Trust Authority came into play, the available options were to either rely on cloud providers for attestation or to build your own service within their infrastructure. Now, Intel® Trust Authority offers a fortified, third-party, and independent alternative for enhanced security, eliminating the need to set up an in-house attestation service. Raghu details the steps involved in the implementation, which include accessing confidential computing infrastructure, incorporating attestation into your application or workload, and having a virtual machine prepared for a confidential computing setting. Like Nikhil, Raghu anticipates that the integration of services like Intel® Trust Authority will soon become a necessity for confidential computing.
Nikhil Deshpande — Intel Senior Director of Security, Chief Business Strategist for Project Amber in the Office of the CTO, and General Manager of Intel® Trust Authority
Nikhil Deshpande serves as the Senior Director of Security, Chief Business Strategist for Project Amber in Intel’s Office of the CTO, and is the General Manager of Intel® Trust Authority. In previous roles, he spearheaded silicon security strategic planning within the Data Center Group and oversaw security research in Intel Labs. Nikhil is a patent holder with over 20 patents to his name and frequently participates as a speaker at industry events. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Portland State University, along with an M.S. in Technology Management from Oregon Health & Science University.
Raghu Yeluri — Intel Chief Architect of Project Amber, Senior Principal Engineer in the Data Center Group, and Chief Architect of Intel® Trust Authority
Raghu Yeluri is a Senior Principal Engineer and the lead Security Architect in Intel’s Office of the CTO/Security Architecture and Technology Group. He specializes in confidential computing, hardware-based trust mechanisms, container security, and cloud security technologies. He is also the Chief Architect for Intel’s security libraries—an integrated attestation platform for Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) and trusted computing for various platforms—as well as the Chief Architect of Intel® Trust Authority. Raghu holds multiple patents in areas including security, attestation, and protection mechanisms for containers and VMs. A frequent speaker at industry conferences, he has also co-authored two books on cloud computing and its security. Raghu earned his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University.
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The views and opinions expressed are those of the guests and author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Intel Corporation.
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