Welcome to the October/November 2023 edition of the Confidential Computing Consortium newsletter! We look forward to sharing every month news about projects underway, new members, industry events and other useful information to keep you updated with what’s happening at the consortium.

Linux Foundation Member Summit

The Linux Member Summit is for leadership of the Linux Foundation, LF projects and major open source initiatives.  This year it was held in Monterey, California, and Mike Bursell (Executive Director) and Stephen Walli (out-going Chair of the Governing Board) attended and delivered a session entitled 50+ companies, 500+ opinions: Aligning Activities with Member Priorities, discussing the history of the CCC, the challenges and opportunities presented by its diverse membership and the approaches being taken to mitigate and capitalise on them.  The model of minimum-viable governance received a number of questions from the audience and engagement after the session.

A small number of governing board members also met in person for a GB meeting (with others attending virtually), and there were also discussions with existing members, potential members and other projects (Linux Foundation and others) with a possible overlap with Confidential Computing (such as the Linux Foundation’s Digital Trust project).

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Summit

In November, the CCC was associate sponsor for the PET Summit Singapore, curating the first morning of a two day conference (agenda).  Mike Bursell (Executive Director) moderated the initial session of the conference, introducing Privacy-Enhancing Technologies in general and talking to experts from a variety of backgrounds. Richard Searle of Fortanix then moderated another session, looking particularly at Confidential Computing and the impact it is having on industry today, followed by presentations by Vikas Ujjwal Kumar (Lead Architect
Microsoft Technology Centre APAC, Singapore) and Ayush Batra (Regional CTO, Intel). Mike closed out the morning with a presentation about Confidential Computing and the work of the CCC.

The rest of the conference looked at various PETs, situating them strongly within a business context, and with strong representation from local agencies and organisations.  Notable was the focus on the importance of focussing on the problem that PETs solve, rather than looking for solutions that a particular technology might address.  The IMDA (Singapore’s technology hub and regulator) was the other major sponsor and runs “sandbox” projects to identify and solve issues with the use of PETs: they are very interested in projects from members of the CCC.

This conference was an opportunity for the CCC to execute on its strategy of expanding engagement in the Asia Pacific region and led to interest in membership and collaboration with various organisations, as well as the opportunity to meet in person with several existing members.

Thanks,
The Confidential Computing Consortium