The importance of confidential computing

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Recently the issue of data security has been addressed beyond movies and fiction. Some countries have seen the reflection of the lack of security in procedures involving personal data.

At the beginning of 2021 in Brazil there was the biggest data leak in the country's history. About 223 million CPFs (an important document used by the population to make purchases and official registrations) of Brazilians were made available for free in an internet forum; and a hacker would sell information related to these people, including their address, phone number, email address, credit score, salary, income, and more.

Data prices ranged from US$0.075 to US$1 per CPF, depending on the amount of information – which was sold exclusively through bitcoin to make transactions difficult to track.

This led to a discussion in the country about how data is used and stored, as it is currently impossible not to use databases for control and query procedures.

This leads to the importance of confidential computing. Confidential computing is the protection of in-use data using hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEE).

The primary purpose is to protect data and applications by running them in secure places that isolate data and code to prevent unauthorized access and improper manipulation, even when computing infrastructure is compromised. As was the case in Brazil.