Intel provides a reliable foundation for Azure confidential computing

Microsoft Azure DCsv2-Series, based on Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) and with a hardware-based trusted execution environment (TEE), is now available. Relying on the reliable foundation provided by Intel, Azure DCsv2-Series enables confidential computing to reach a wide range of enterprise customers, helping them to effectively protect sensitive workloads while making full use of cloud computing.

“Customers need to encrypt data in use to reduce the attack surface while also strengthening protection of sensitive data in the cloud,” said Anil Rao, vice president of Data Center Security and System Architecture at Intel. “Intel and Microsoft’s collaboration brings enterprise-grade confidential computing solutions to the market, allowing customers to take advantage of the cloud and multi-party computing paradigms with Intel® Software Guard Extensions.”

Combined with encrypted data storage and transmission methods, TEE can create an end-to-end protection architecture for sensitive data, such as important data in the financial services and healthcare fields. Microsoft Azure is the first cloud provider to use hardware-optimized TEE as an encryption mechanism to help customers protect data in use and provide a wide range of virtualization services. This move can strengthen security and privacy controls while supporting cloud data processing. Relying on Intel® Software Guard Extensions, Azure confidential computing virtual machines are independent of the operating system, hypervisor or virtual machine manager, and other privileged processes.

Today, Intel® Software Guard Extensions are available for Intel® Xeon® processor E-2100 series, and efforts are underway to extend them to subsequent generations of mainstream Xeon platforms. As Intel announced in February, the company is continuing to expand Intel® Software Guard Extensions technology to expand the scope of protection, extend protection to accelerators, and optimize performance. The number of use cases that can take advantage of these advanced application isolation capabilities will further increase.

Intel and Microsoft will work together to support customers in performing data processing in a more secure and private cloud environment in the future. Both companies are founding members of the Confidential Computing Consortium and are committed to providing a more secure computing infrastructure for today and tomorrow through industry collaboration.