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Confidential Computing at AWS
Introduction
- Arvind and William are presenting on the topic of protecting sensitive data with AWS Confidential Computing.
- They will discuss AWS's perspective on Confidential Computing, the different dimensions of Confidential Computing, the Nitro system, AWS Nitro Enclaves, and some popular use cases.
What is Confidential Computing?
- AWS defines Confidential Computing as the use of specialized hardware and associated firmware to protect data in use from any unauthorized access.
- It's about protecting data while it is being processed, in addition to protecting data at rest and in transit.
- Customers care about two main dimensions of Confidential Computing:
- Protecting content, code, and data from the cloud provider's operators.
- Isolating highly sensitive code and data from the customer's own admin-level users or malicious actors.
- Sensitive data types include personally identifiable information, encryption keys, healthcare information, financial information, and intellectual property.
AWS Nitro System and No Operator Access
- The AWS Nitro system is the foundation of virtualization for EC2 instances.
- It abstracts away virtualization functions from the host, resulting in better performance, resource utilization, and security isolation.
- The Nitro system provides no operator access by default, meaning there is no SSH or general-purpose access for AWS operators.
- The Nitro TPM (Trusted Platform Module) allows for measured boot and cryptographic attestation to prove the instance's identity.
- AWS has updated their service terms to reflect the no operator access guarantee.
AWS Nitro Enclaves
- Nitro Enclaves provide the ability to spin up isolated compute environments within EC2 instances to securely process data.
- Key features of Nitro Enclaves:
- Isolated and hardened environment, unlike containers
- Flexibility in terms of instance types, CPU cores, and memory
- Cryptographic attestation using AWS KMS integration
- Nitro Enclaves enable use cases such as tokenization, multi-party collaboration, and confidential inferencing.
One Password's Journey with Nitro Enclaves
- One Password, a customer using Nitro Enclaves, presented their experience and the benefits they have achieved.
- Key aspects of their implementation:
- Isolation of sensitive data processing in Nitro Enclaves
- Transparency through the use of a public transparency log (Rekor)
- Secure communication between the client and the Enclave using the Noise protocol
- Data persistence service for decoupling client and server processes
- Benefits include significant performance improvements and the ability to run sensitive workloads without compromising security and privacy.
Popular Use Cases for Confidential Computing
- Tokenization for ad tech, financial services, and healthcare
- Multi-party collaboration where parties don't fully trust each other
- Confidential inferencing to protect user data in machine learning models
Takeaways and Resources
- Understand what you are protecting and who you are protecting it from when considering Confidential Computing solutions.
- The Nitro system provides always-on Confidential Computing, but Nitro Enclaves offer additional isolation and flexibility.
- AWS provides a range of Confidential Computing solutions and resources to help customers, including workshops and certification.