Google Cloud's Confidential Computing encrypts customer data in-use

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IANS | 14 Jul, 2020
Google Cloud on Tuesday announced breakthrough Confidential Computing that will encrypt consumer data in-use while it is being processed.

Currently, as organisations move workloads to the cloud, one of the biggest concerns they have is how to process sensitive data while keeping it private.

Google Cloud encrypts data at-rest and in-transit, but customer data must be decrypted for processing.

Confidential Computing environments keep data encrypted in memory and elsewhere outside the central processing unit (CPU).

This technology will transform the way organizations process data in the cloud, maintain control over their data, and preserve confidentiality, Google Cloud said in a statement as it kicked off its ‘Cloud Next' annual conference for enterprise partners and developers.

Confidential VMs (virtual machines) is the first product in Google Cloud's Confidential Computing portfolio. Confidential VMs are available on AMD CPUs.

"Confidential VMs will help us better serve customers so they can securely take advantage of the innovation of the cloud while also simplifying security operations," said Sunil Potti, General Manager and VP of Security at Google Cloud.

Google Cloud already employs a variety of isolation and sandboxing techniques as part of its cloud infrastructure to help make its multi-tenant architecture secure.

Confidential VMs, now in beta, take this to the next level by offering memory encryption so that customers can further isolate workloads in the cloud, said the company.

Google Cloud is the first major cloud provider to offer this level of security and isolation while giving customers an easy-to-use solution that doesn't require changing code in apps or compromising on performance.

Google Cloud also announced new ‘BigQuery Omni' solution that enables data analysis across cloud platforms.

‘BigQuery Omni' is a multi-cloud analytics solution that enables customers to bring the power of BigQuery to data stored in Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure (coming soon).

"BigQuery Omni provides enterprises with the openness portability they need to break down silos and create actionable business insights, all without having to pay expensive egress fees for moving data from other cloud providers to Google Cloud," said Debanjan Saha, General Manager of Data Analytics, Google Cloud.