VMware, in collaboration with leading tech companies, has announced a partnership aimed at expediting the development of confidential computing applications during the 2023 Confidential Computing Summit.
Confidential computing, which ensures the integrity and confidentiality of data and applications even in cloud and third-party infrastructure, is anticipated to play a vital role in safeguarding sensitive information and intellectual property with the rise of multi-cloud deployments and machine learning.
However, the adoption of confidential computing has been hindered by the complexity involved in creating applications for this technology.
To address these challenges, VMware has been working on the Certifier Framework for Confidential Computing, a developer-focused project that has garnered support from major players such as AMD, Samsung, and members of the RISC-V Keystone community. The open-source Certifier Framework offers a standardized, platform-agnostic API for building and operating confidential computing applications, complemented by the Certifier Service, which facilitates trust management and related services.
The Certifier API simplifies programming and operational support for multi-vendor confidential computing platforms, encompassing attestation evaluation, secure storage, platform initialization, secret sharing, and secure channels, among other services.
The Certifier Framework aims to streamline the development of privacy-focused applications, secure cloud workloads, and secret-preserving services by providing support for defining and implementing trust policies.
To foster collaboration and further development, VMware invites the community to review and contribute to the open-source Certifier Framework, with the goal of standardizing platform-independent APIs and driving the advancement of confidential computing code for x86, Arm, and RISC-V ecosystems.
By enabling secure workloads across multi-cloud and edge environments, confidential computing has the potential to revolutionize data protection, and VMware aims to assist customers in adopting and implementing this standard with ease.
