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Happy Holidays!🎄 Welcome to the 2024 December Newsletter

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December’s Issue:

  1. Adieu, 2024. Outreach Year In Review Quick Snapshot
  2. Executive Director Year In Review
  3. TAC Year In Review
  4. CCC Mentorships are Open!
  5. Community News

Welcome to the December edition of our newsletter – your guide to awesome happenings in our CCC community. We’re excited to continue to connect with you and help drive innovation. Let’s go!

CCC Presence in 2024 & Looking Ahead

The CCC has grown tremendously with lots of activities this year. Thanks to all the CCC community members for their participation and collaboration. We could not do what we do without our members’ involvement. 

The CCC showed up at more than 20 events this year, delivering talks, demos, and networking opportunities. We’ve also published more than 47 blogs, white papers, and tech talk/webinars hosted on our platform. One of the biggest publications was The Case for Confidential Computing white paper. Our social media interaction has increased more than 93%, making an impressive milestone for our community.

Awesome job this year!

In the new year, we have many more activities forming up. Our focus is to double down on impactful engagement with a more targeted approach. Our events will be reduced in quantity but more targeted to industry verticals, driving meaningful engagement. We’re working on engaging with analysts for a white paper to assess the Confidential Computing market, and a refreshed branding and messaging guide will be introduced as we kick off the new year. Our Outreach Meetings are open to all, if you’re curious about our engagement or want to get involved, feel free to join us!

Executive Director Update

November was a busy month for the CCC and we’ve managed a number of important tasks.  The first is approval of a budget for 2025 and the second is the election of new chairs and vice chairs to our various committees.

I’m delighted to welcome:

  • Governing Board
    • Chair: Nelly Porter (Google)
    • Vice-chair: Emily Fox (Red Hat)
    • General member representatives: Manu Fontaine (Hushmesh), Samuel Ortiz (Rivos Inc.), Mark Medum Bundgaard (Partisia)
  • TAC
    • Chair: Dan Middleton (Intel)
    • Co-Chair: Yash Mankad (Red Hat)
  • Outreach
    • Chair: Rachel Wan (IBM)
    • Vice-chair: Mike Ferron-Jones (Intel)

Thank you to everyone who participated in the elections both as candidates and voters.

We also attended, spoken, and exhibited at KubeCon NA.  It was great to see a growing number of sessions involving Confidential Computing at the conference and also to welcome representatives from various members to staff, share resources, and speak at our booth.  The ability to make use of CCC booths at conferences we’re attending is one of the great benefits of membership in the consortium, particularly for smaller companies and we always welcome representation.

Though things are calming down as December proceeds, there are still activities ongoing.  One of note is a Linux Foundation workshop in Brussels around the new European Union Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).  This is likely to have an impact on members, the CCC, and its projects, and I will be attending to find out more and ensure that we have as much information and input as possible.  Having read the (81-page!) report on the day it was released, I’m planning to produce a summary for members that will help provide a shorter and more readable description of the possible actions we and our members should take as this legislation moves into its implementation phase.

TAC Year In Review

We have for the last couple years organized our work around Projects, Ecosystem, and Community.

Community
Yash Mankad gave us an update on our mentorship program. A big shoutout to Sal for their hard work in facilitating these efforts! Yash also mentioned that for 2025, we aim to expand this program to help keep our project repositories up-to-date.

Fritz Alder gave us a rundown of the Tech Talks coordinated in 2024. The pipeline for 2025 is already growing, and Fritz is committed to organizing more talks, with a focus on academic contributions.

Ecosystem
Alec Fernandez provided insights into our ecosystem work. As security practitioners, we’ve been focusing on security and privacy compliance, standards, and research. One notable improvement is the addition of “data in use” to the Cloud Controls Matrix. 

Mark Novak has led the drafting of a collection of compliance guidelines that we plan to get out early in 2025 as one of our first sets of accomplishments.

Projects
Catherine Zhang updated us on the Linux Kernel SIG’s efforts to facilitate upstreaming CC features into the Linux Kernel. 

Mingshen Sun shared valuable lessons learned from the ManaTEE project. These insights will be instrumental in supporting future projects, particularly in areas like mentorship, hardware, and cloud credits.

We’d also like to celebrate significant progress in OpenSSF compliance across our projects, with COCONUT-SVSM achieving an exceptional 107% compliance score and earning the OpenSSF Passing Badge, SPDM-RS advancing to 97% compliance and nearing badge status, and the Certifier Framework reaching 84% compliance. As we look to 2025, our focus is on increasing compliance across all projects to 90% or higher and standardizing OpenSSF compliance into the onboarding process for new projects, ensuring a consistent commitment to security and excellence.

Mentorship Opportunities Now Open!

NEW! Several CCC projects are now accepting mentorship applications. These mentorships provide hands-on experience in key areas of confidential computing, perfect for developers eager to enhance their skills while contributing to meaningful open source projects.

These mentorships offer an excellent opportunity to develop expertise in confidential computing while contributing to industry-leading projects. We encourage interested participants to apply and join us in shaping the future of confidential computing! Please share these opportunities with your network!

Community News

·        Podcast: TEEs and Confidential Computing: Paving the Way for Onchain AI

·        ACSAC 2024 Cybersecurity Artifact Award: “Rapid Deployment of Confidential Cloud Applications with Gramine”

·        Using trusted execution environments for advertising use cases

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October Newsletter

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October Recap: Highlights include KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA, new CCC project tech talks, and top community blog posts.

In this month’s issue:

  1. Executive Director October Recap
  2. KubeCon & CloudNativeCon NA
  3. Tech Talks + New CCC Project
  4. Community Blog Highlights

Executive Director Update

October/November is voting time at the Confidential Computing Consortium, and so if you are a member of the consortium, we welcome your application to stand as chair or vice chair of any of our three committees: Governing Board, Technical Advisory Committee, and Outreach Committee.  It is with sadness that we say goodbye to Ron Perez, who has served as Chair of the Governing Board with great wisdom and patience, providing his experience to all and sundry.  We wish him well and thank him for his work with the Consortium: I personally have benefited immensely from his counsel and advice during his tenure.

The CCC also appeared at OSS Japan again this year.  Mark Medum Bundgaard of Partisia and I hosted a Birds of a Feather session on Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and presented a session on Confidential Computing for AI, Multi-Party Collaboration and Web3: as always, I’m very happy to share my slides and discuss with anybody with an interest.  Next month a number of members will be in Salt Lake City for Kubecon North America – if you can make it, we’d love to see you there.

Meet Us at KubeCon NA

Come Join Us For Some Fun!!

Stop by the CCC Booth (Q25) for various activities throughout the event.

We have prepared;

  • Privacy Jeopardy during KubeCrawl
  • CC Scavenger Hunt
  • Mini Sessions
  • Demos
  • Fun Swags

You can use our 20% discount code to register: KCNA24TYKAN20

Can’t wait to see you there!!

Register Here

Tech Talks

Our Tech Talk series continued strong with a presentation from Caroline Perez-Vargas on Microsoft’s new OpenHCL project. Since Caroline’s talk the project has been made available on GitHub with an open source license. There’s a natural next step for this project but I just can’t put my finger on it. 😉   Oh well, we’ll just have to see what they have in mind to expand the contributor base with Confidential Computing subject matter experts.

We also heard from Chanda Nelogal on Extending Confidentiality to Data Storage. Chandra introduced us to intersections with Confidential Computing and Self Encrypting Drives. As we see Confidential Computing capable devices enter the market, some of us have focused on accelerators, but storage devices are an interesting and important category. We look forward to Chandra returning to take the conversation further.

TAC Tech Talk playlist 

CCC Welcomes New Open Source Project

We are excited to announce the addition of a new project to the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) portfolio: ManaTEE. This innovative platform creates secure data clean rooms, enabling privacy-compliant collaboration for industries like healthcare and finance. ManaTEE supports tools such as Jupyter Notebooks, providing a flexible environment for secure multi-party research and analysis.

Learn about ManaTEE Here

Let’s grow our community!
Share this with your network.

September Newsletter: CC Mini Summit Recordings, Tech Talks, Secure AI Pipelines, and more

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Hello Community!

Welcome to the 2024 September Newsletter

In Today’s Issue:

  1. Executive Director September Recap
  2. Recordings from the CC Mini Summit @ OSSEU
  3. TAC Tech Talks & Upcoming Discussions
  4. Community Blog Highlights

Welcome to the September edition of our newsletter – your guide to awesome happenings in our CCC community. Let’s go!

Executive Director Update

September saw us holding a Confidential Computing Mini-Summit, co-located with Open Source Summit Europe in Vienna.  Despite torrential rain and major flooding in the preceding days, all of the speakers and panel members made it and we had an interesting – and sometimes spirited! – set of discussions.  I particularly enjoyed moderating a panel on attestation – see below for more on that topic.  The slide decks from the speakers as well as the video recordings at the Mini-Summit will be available for you to watch.

I also popped over to Dublin for the Eyes Off Data Summit, where I appeared as a panel member in a session about the opportunities and challenges of Confidential Computing.

The main thing that I’m seeing at the moment in the community is a realization that while there’s still a lot of work to be done educating the wider world on the basics of Confidential Computing and TEEs, the really interesting work and the really exciting business opportunities are likely to revolve around attestation.  This is reflected in the conversations we’re having at conferences and the work that we’re doing in the CCC.  There are two main streams of work: the technical, where we’re looking at definitions, protocols and related areas; and business questions such as “who should run an attestation verification service?” and “what sorts of policies should we expect an attestation verification service to enforce?”.  Spanning these streams is the work by the Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) SIG, which also considers issues around regulation.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, or you’d like to be involved in any way in the work of the CCC, we’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch

CC Mini Summit Recordings & Slides

On Demand Content is Available NOW!

Enjoy the recordings from the Confidential Computing Mini Summit at OSS EU.

Watch the Recording

TAC Update

This month we had three really deep tech talks. A couple are more on the advanced end of the spectrum but don’t let that scare you away from checking them out. They were all presented in really accessible formats. You’ll see the TAC Tech Talks playlist alongside our other playlists on the CCC YouTube channel:

TAC Tech Talk playlist 

Heading into October we’re in our final quarter to complete the goals we set for ourselves for the year. One of the big topics is getting Confidential Computing Features upstreamed into the Linux Kernel. The primary maintainers conference (The Linux Plumbers Conference) just concluded in late September so we’ll be getting some feedback from that in the TAC in October.

We’re also looking at starting some new work related to attestation verification. Feedback from another exercise showed us that there’s still areas that need a common definition. Among them, being able to identify entities that are in and out of the Trusted Computing Base (TCB), also informally called the trust boundary. Entities like CSPs are pretty big and we want to be more granular to more accurately reflect who is and isn’t trusted for a given deployment – or at least what sort of questions an adopter should think through.

Community Blog Highlights

August Newsletter

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In Today’s Issue:

  1. Executive Director August Recap
  2. Agenda Released! CC Mini Summit @ OSSEU
  3. Post-Quantum Cryptography
  4. Web3 Use Case
  5. Community Blog Highlights

Welcome to the August edition of our newsletter – your guide to awesome happenings in our CCC community. Let’s go!

Executive Director August recap

While it’s holiday season in much of the Northern Hemisphere, the CCC’s work continues (uninterrupted even by the Olympics and Paralympics!), and as we’ve grown over the past few years, we’ve made the decision to continue Governing Board meetings throughout the year, instead of breaking for the (Northern) summer period.  The Governing Board manages the strategic and policy directions of the CCC, including budgetary decisions and the acceptance of new open-source projects into the Consortium.  Attendance is open to officers of the Consortium, Premier Member representatives, and the elected Governing Board representatives of the General Members.  Representatives from other committees typically attend and present the status of work in their respective areas and sometimes the Governing Board requests reports from other groups.

While keeping within the governance structure of the Consortium, we try to maintain a “minimal viable governance” approach.  Post-Covid (and changing travel budget constraints for many organizations), opportunities to meet in person have been reduced, so we are considering a face-to-face meeting (supplemented by video conferencing) at the Linux Foundation Member Summit in November: please let us know if you’re going to be there (even if you’re not a Premier member!).

One of the areas that the Governing Board has been keen to promote work on this year has been lowering barriers to the adoption of Confidential Computing.  One of these is the availability of Attestation Verification Services, which allow consumers of Confidential Computing services to gain the cryptographic assurances about the workloads they need.  Attestation is a core part of Confidential Computing, and the word “attested” was deliberately added to the CCC’s definition of Confidential Computing to reflect that:
“Confidential Computing is the protection of data in use by performing computation in a hardware-based, attested Trusted Execution Environment.”

The CCC has recently kicked off a piece of work to encourage discussion of business models around Attestation Verification Services and to help those considering providing or consuming them.  An initial discussion document has generated a great deal of input and the plan is to start a working group with online meetings later in August.  If you are interested in participating, please get in touch.

CC Mini Summit Agenda Announced!

Bringing EU Community Together

CCC is hosting the “Confidential Computing Mini Summit” at the Open Source Summit EU, Vienna Austria

  • 📢 Mini Summit Agenda
  • ⏰ Time: 13:30 – 17:00
  • 📍 Room 0.14 (level 0) – see floor plan here
  • 🎫 Mini Summit Registration Fee: $10
  • 💰 20% Discount Code for Main Summit: OSSEUCOLOSPK20
    (*Note: Registration for the main conference is required to attend the Mini Summit.)
  • Register Here

Post-Quantum Cryptography

Over the last few weeks at TAC meetings, we’ve been discussing the new evolution of cryptography called Post-Quantum Cryptography or PQC. As full-scale quantum computers become more and more likely, cryptographers have had to invent new algorithms that will remain secure against adversaries with new capabilities. In Confidential Computing, we rely on cryptography in a number of ways to protect workloads in use. As a trusted execution environment (TEE) starts we use cryptographic hash algorithms to fingerprint each component.

Later we use cryptographic signatures when the hardware attests to those measurements. While the workload is running the memory is protected with encryption and in some cases integrity provisions. Some of these algorithms are more impacted by quantum computing than others. Hardware vendors will need to update their algorithms. Software vendors may want to shield downstream adopters by carefully designing their APIs. If you are interested to learn more keep your eyes open for an upcoming blog on our Post Quantum Cryptography discussions or watch our Tech Talk.

TAC Tech Talk playlist 

Bringing EU Community Together

CCC is hosting the “Confidential Computing Mini Summit” at the Open Source Summit EU, Vienna Austria

  • 📢 Mini Summit Agenda
  • ⏰ Time: 13:30 – 17:00
  • 📍 Room 0.14 (level 0) – see floor plan here
  • 🎫 Mini Summit Registration Fee: $10
  • 💰 20% Discount Code for Main Summit: OSSEUCOLOSPK20
    (*Note: Registration for the main conference is required to attend the Mini Summit.)
  • Register Here

Web3 Use Case

Enabling Verifiable, User-Owned and Tradable AI Agents in Games – with Veriplay, Polygon, Immutable and Super Protocol

True Web3 Games, with their potential for rich gaming experiences, advanced AI agents, and genuine digital asset ownership, can only reach their full potential through the implementation of Confidential Computing in a truly decentralized manner. The Confidential Computing Consortium, alongside its member Super Protocol, is at the forefront of this revolution, demonstrating how these technologies can unlock new business opportunities.

Read the Full Use Case

Community Blog Highlights

July Newsletter

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In Today’s Issue:

  1. Executive Director July Recap
  2. The Case for Confidential Computing
  3. Community News
  4. OSS EU 2024, Confidential Computing Mini Summit

Welcome to the July edition of our newsletter – your guide to awesome happenings in our CCC community. Let’s go!

Executive Director July recap

Following the announcement of a 12-month free subscription to the CCC for new members of under 100 employees, we’ve had a steady stream of new members and it’s continuously growing! If you are a start-up and would like to get involved in the CCC’s work (or you know another organization that might be interested), please get in touch. You can find information about many of the benefits on our website.

This month, I went back in Asia, meeting members (and potential members) in South Korea and Singapore. The CCC sponsored the Privacy-Enhancing Technology Summit Asia-Pacific again this year and we had a fantastic turnout. Read the full recap blog here.

Having had the CC Summit in North America and the PET Summit in Singapore, we’re not about to leave out Europe, where we’re seeing increasing interest and traction for Confidential Computing. I led a panel discussion on CC for the European Central Bank with Parviz Peiravi from Intel and Felix Schuster from Edgeless Systems recently. And we’re also running a CC Mini-Summit at Open Source Summit in Vienna on the 19th September. No waltzes are promised, but there are opportunities to speak: still few more days to submit your talk! Mini Summit CFP

CCC’s Use Case Report is LIVE

As the collection, storage, and analysis of data become increasingly important across industries, businesses are looking for solutions that keep data secure and processes compliant with regulations. Confidential computing is one of these solutions, involving the use of a trusted execution environment that runs on shared infrastructure but processes data away from unauthorized users.

This use case report interviewed members of the confidential computing community on the ways they have implemented the technology and what they believe its future holds.

Read the Full Report

Community News

Meet us at Open Source Summit

Bringing EU Community Together

CCC is hosting the “Confidential Computing Mini Summit” at the Open Source Summit EU, Vienna Austria

  • ⏰ Time: 13:30 – 17:00
  • 🎫 Mini Summit Registration Fee: $10
  • 💰 20% Discount Code for Main Summit: OSSEUCOLOSPK20
    (*Note: Registration for the main conference is required to attend the Mini Summit.)
  • Register Here

June Newsletter

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In Today’s Issue:

  1. Executive Director June Recap
  2. NEW ANNOUNCEMENT!
  3. Securing the Software Supply Chain
  4. Community News
  5. OSS EU 2024, Confidential Computing Mini Summit

Executive Director June recap

It was great to meet so many of you at the Confidential Computing Summit in San Francisco – both at the CCC sponsored meet-up at a local speakeasy and at the conference itself. I would like in particular like to thank everyone who engaged with and supported the work we’re doing at the CCC – by coming to the booth, talking to us in person and, of course, attending and speaking sessions. As well as a great deal of discussion around use cases (with a particular focus on AI), many people were interested in getting involved in discussions around business models for remote attestation, one of several topics I brought up in my keynote session (regulator and standards engagement was another popular one).  If you’re interested in getting involved, please let me know!

Combined with a number of podcasts, webinars and panel discussions at various conferences, interest in and visibility of Confidential Computing really seems to be picking up. We’ve got a working group on repositioning the CCC’s messaging to ensure that we’re able to respond to industry and ecosystem interest: we’d love more involvement in this as well.

Exciting News for Start-ups!

The Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) has launched a new membership tier tailored for start-ups, offering a complimentary first-year membership. This initiative aims to empower emerging companies by providing access to vital resources, collaborative opportunities, and industry insights. Eligible start-ups can connect with leaders, gain educational materials, and influence industry standards. This is a fantastic chance to be part of the future of secure computing. 

 To learn more and apply, visit the Confidential Computing Consortium blog.

Securing the Software Supply Chain

In the wake of SolarWinds and other high-profile supply chain attacks, Confidential Computing offers new ways to protect the integrity of the software we all rely on. 
Recently we heard from Chad Kimes of Github and Marcela Melara from Intel on securing the software supply chain. They shared their work on SLSA, in-toto, & CI/CD for secure, attestable builds. You can watch their tech talk here.

Community News

Meet us at Open Source Summit

Bringing EU Community Together

CCC is hosting the “Confidential Computing Mini Summit” at the Open Source Summit EU, Vienna Austria.

  • ⏰ Time: 13:30 – 17:00
  • 🎫 Mini Summit Registration Fee: $10
  • 💰 20% Discount Code for Main Summit: OSSEUCOLOSPK20
    (*Note: Registration for the main conference is required to attend the Mini Summit.)
  • Register Here

Have a topic you want to present at the Mini Summit? Submit CFP Here

April Newsletter

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Welcome to the 2024 CCC Newsletter- your guide to awesome happenings in our CCC community.

In Today’s Issue:

  1. Welcome New Members from the Confidential Computing Consortium
  2. New SIG to Bridging the Gap Between Linux Kernel and Confidential Computing Developers
  3. Meet us at RSAC
  4. Outreach Engagement

From the Executive Director

The conference season is well and truly upon us and I’m pleased to be speaking at a number of them during the next few months.  It’s also great to see more sessions on Confidential Computing being accepted by program committees: if you or a colleague is presenting at a conference session, please let the Outreach committee know so that we can spread the word via the newsletter, social media and beyond.

NVIDIA Premier Membership

I’m also very glad to be able to welcome NVIDIA as a Premier Member.  They have been with the CCC for a while, but have recently moved up to Premier, with Michael O’Connor serving as their GB representative.  In fact, we’re beginning to see an uptick in engagement by members across the committees, SIGs and beyond: this can only help the goals of the CCC as we make the most of the opportunities that are arising as the ecosystem realizes the benefits that Confidential Computing can bring.

I hope to see you at one of the conferences we’re attending: please let us know if you’re going to be at any of them – details available on the website under Events.

Read about NVIDIA and our upcoming Events.

I

Screenshot 2024-04-22 164949

FROM The TAC

Announcing Our New SIG: Bridging the Gap Between Linux Kernel and Confidential Computing Developers

We’re thrilled to unite two groups within the same company who haven’t always been in communication: Linux Kernel developers and Confidential Computing developers. While some individuals may straddle both roles, often they represent distinct disciplines.

Read about the SIG and upcoming meetings.

RSAC 2024_1600x900_GEN 9

Bringing Confidential Computing to RSAC 2024

Membership Has Its Benefits. Get an Extra $150 off RSAC 2024.

Join us May 6 – 9 at RSAC 2024, the ultimate cybersecurity destination. Immerse yourself in expert-led sessions, connect with industry leaders, and discover the latest trends and best practices. Elevate your cybersecurity game and be a part of shaping the industry’s future. Don’t miss this opportunity to advance your skills and network with the best in the field. 

CCC members save an additional $150 when registering with code 14UCCCFD. Register now. 

Visit us at Booth #2161 (South Expo)

CCC $150 Discount Code: 14UCCCFD

CCC FREE Expo Pass Code: 52ECONCOMPXO 

VIEW FULL AGENDA

Outreach Engagement

CCC at Industry Conferences

New Blog Series to Add to Your Favorite

CCSummiit CCC Kit Twitter (1)-1
Register for CC Summit

May Newsletter

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Welcome to the 2024 May Newsletter

In Today’s Issue:

  1. RSAC Recap
  2. New CCC Working Groups
  3. Tech Talk on Attestation
  4. CCC Blogs + Upcoming Events
  5. CC Summit: Conference for Confidential Data & AI

Hello Community Member,

CCC New Working Groups

As you know, industry-leading organizations come together at CCC and are constantly working to develop and collaborate on standards for Confidential Computing.

On this topic, we’re forming a working group to look at repositioning the CCC and how we present ourselves to the outside world (not to mention potential members), including reflecting on the importance of AI, data privacy, and collaborative computation.

Another working group is considering whether the Consortium should offer a certification for companies, products, services, or solutions.  We’re looking for involvement in both of these working groups, so if you have strong views on either, please get in touch.

Tech Talk on Attestation

Attestation lets us evaluate whether we can trust an enclave or a Confidential Virtual Machine (CVM). CVMs have more moving parts to evaluate than enclaves.

This month we had a great Tech Talk from Googler, Dionna Glaze. She explained a lot of the detail required to provide transparency and trust in some of these layers like the virtual firmware (UEFI). 

Watch this talk on YouTube and find the slides in our TAC Governance repository.

New Blogs This Month

CCC at Industry Conferences

Coming up next, here are our upcoming event activities.

ccc50

BIGGEST Discount Ever Exclusively for CCC Community

We’re pumped to have so many expert speakers coming together for #CCSummit in just a few weeks. Save BIG with the CCC discount code and invite your network to join us.

CCC member HH (1280 x 720 px)-1
Happy Hour for All (& Aspiring) Members!
Coming to CC Summit? Join us for an evening of an unforgettable speakeasy experience and good conversation. Mark your calendar, RSVP below, and we can’t wait to see you!
⏰ June 4th, Tuesday | 6PM
📍 Bourbon & Branch San Francisco
🎫 RSVP Here
If you find this newsletter helpful, forward this to your network!
Subscribe to CCC Newsletter

March 2024 Newsletter

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In Today’s Issue:

 

    1. Executive Director’s Corner
    2. TAC Community
    3. Outreach Engagement
    4. Join us at RSA

Spring greetings! March is the start of a lovely season. We’re continuing our momentum and bringing you the latest and greatest here at CCC. Let’s dive in.

Executive Director’s Note

February was a busy month for the CCC, with appearances or attendance at FOSDEM, State of Open, Rocky Mountain Cyberspace Summit, and PET Summit Europe in London. The breadth of engagement – ranging from technical, open source, US government/federal/defense and European banking/compliance and beyond – shows how use cases for Confidential Computing are becoming increasingly relevant across multiple sectors and contexts. With new membership from Fujitsu and Tiktok moving to participate as a Premier Member, we are also seeing a broader global engagement, which we are keen to address with meetings at times that are appropriate for more members, so if you’re interested in attending any of our committees or SIGs, please get in touch and we can hopefully find a time that works for you.

From the TAC
In response to requests from the Cloud Security Alliance and others, the TAC is looking at defining additional terminology. Currently terms fundamental to Confidential Computing… like “Confidential Computing” 🙂 are defined in the A Technical Analysis of Confidential Computing. Confidential Computing artifacts like “Confidential Container” and “Confidential VM” are defined in “Common Terminology for Confidential Computing”. We received requests for clarification about what we might call operational terminology – concepts like “Trust Anchor”.

The TAC anticipates formalizing these definitions in a CCC-governed paper and then perhaps promoting them in other places like Wikipedia. If you would like to contribute, as always “All are Welcome” to contribute to our TAC meetings. Last month we announced the TAC goals defined across Projects, Ecosystem, and Community. TAC representatives from each of the premiere members are taking responsibility to lead one of these areas. Lily and Yash from Red Hat have gotten us off to a great start with their work in the Community objectives. Partnering with Riaan and Sal from our staff, they are well underway to make the internship and mentoring process an enriching experience for the CCC and for our new contributors. If you would like to hear more about the other objectives feel free to reach out to any of our TAC members in slack or on the mail list.

They will be excited to tell you what they are planning.Last but not least, we also announced our newest Special Interest Group last month. SIGs are sub-communities with a common topical interest. The Linux Kernel SIG is now underway working to develop common infrastructure and approaches to increase cross architecture reuse and reduce upstream Linux Kernel maintenance burden. Logistical information is making its way onto the CCC committees page.

Technical Community

March has seen significant developments in Confidential Computing, with a major focus on KubeCon. This event brought to light the advancements in container security and the integration of Kubernetes with confidential computing, setting new standards for cloud-native application security.

KubeCon Technical Highlights:
– Enhanced security features in container runtimes, notably with CRI-O’s next iteration.
– Greater Integration of TEEs with Kubernetes, marking a significant step in securing cloud-native ecosystems.
– The introduction of WebAssembly (WASM) for secure microservices, pushing the envelope for container runtime security.

For a full review of the technologies discussed at KubeCon, see our upcoming blog post on the topic.

March underscored the importance of Confidential Computing with key takeaways from KubeCon, focusing on security enhancements in container runtimes, Kubernetes’ integration with TEEs, and the role of WebAssembly in secure microservices. As we head into April, the CCC is gearing up for the IAPP Global Privacy Summit next week, aiming to share key updates on regulation around privacy and technology with our community.

A reminder for project maintainers: prioritize improving your OpenSSF Scorecard scores, we are currently on track to have all projects at a high or perfect security posture score by the end of Q2, great work everyone!

Outreach Engagement
 ———————–
Monthly Analytics
Recently, we’ve covered our monthly analytics report of the website, newsletter, and social in our Outreach Meeting. We’re seeing some positive growth and we’ll keep tracking monthly to improve the health of our activities.

Upcoming Events
RSA (May 6-9): All members exhibiting or planning to attend, 📣LET’S COLLABORATE. CCC will have a booth and we’d like to work with you. Here’s what you can do:
Submit Your Video Content: We’d love to display member content on our booth screen.
Provide Booth No.: Let’s cross-promote. We’ll promote your booth number on our passport card.
Showcase Demo: If you have something to show on the show floor, you can use the CCC booth to showcase your demo.
Identiverse (May 28-31): CCC is hosting a panel session “Confidential Computing: The Internet’s Missing Cryptography Engine
CC Summit (Jun 5-6): CFP for CCC breakout sessions will be available soon. Join the Outreach Committee call to discuss more.
PET APAC (July 16): Calling all our Confidential Computing Enthusiasts in APAC! Open opportunity to be announced soon.
For any questions regarding CCC events, email Events SIG.

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CCC Newsletter- February

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Hello Community Member,

We’re wrapping up a busy February with a lot of CCC engagements at industry events and various internal revamp processes.

A quick reminder of what we’re about: Confidential Computing Consortium is a community focused on open-source licensed projects securing DATA IN USE and accelerating the adoption of confidential computing through open collaboration. We welcome all members and projects to be involved and engaged. We’re all contributors to shaping the future of Confidential Computing.

Let’s go!

In February’s Issue:

  1. Executive Director’s Corner 
  2.  Outreach Activity – Your Opportunity to Get Involved
  3.  All Things Technical Community
  4. CCC Community Content

From the Executive Director

The conference season is heating up again, and Confidential Computing is becoming more visible in all kinds of areas. We started February with a whole afternoon track (“devroom”) on Confidential Computing at the developer-led FOSDEM in Brussels, followed by a talk by Sal Kimmich at State of Open UK in London. I’m at the Rocky Mountain Cyberspace Symposium in Colorado Springs during the week of the 19th of February, and we round off the month with the Privacy-Enhancing Summit in London (see below!).

We’re also having success in having an increasing number of sessions being accepted at major conferences including the Confidential Computing Summit and RSA Conference North America. What we’d love to do is make the most of these opportunities with members of the Consortium, so if you’re attending or exhibiting at any conferences, please let us know: we always look for ways to coordinate and amplify each others’ efforts.

CCC Outreach Activities

Kicking off the year with a bang! February was full of CCC activities at industry events. You’re invited.

Upcoming Events

  • PET EU (Feb 27-28): CCC is an Associate Partner for PET series. Use the discount code ‘CCC10‘ and join us in London!
    • [Presentation] Confidential Computing and AI: Securing Data and Driving Innovation by Simon Gallagher (Microsoft)
    • [Panel] Fortifying Privacy and Security: The Power of Confidential Computing Solutions with Simon Gallagher (Microsoft), Andreas Walbrodt (Enclaive), Bertrand Foing (Secretarium & Klave) moderated by Mike Bursell (CCC)
    • [Panel] Building an AI Toolbox: How to Utilise Regulated Data Enterprises with David Pollington (Bloc Ventures), Amir Tabakovic (Mobey Forum) moderated by Sal Kimmich (CCC)
    • [Roundtable] Protecting Privacy in AI and Emerging Technologies led by Sal Kimmich
    • [Welcome Reception Jeopardy!] Co-hosted with Partisia. Jeopardy led by Sal Kimmich
  • OC3 (Mar 13): Sal Kimmich speaking on “The road ahead: How confidential computing will evolve in the 2020s and beyond”
  • OSS NA, Seattle (Apr 16-18): Get ready for the CCC Mini-Summit.
  • RSA (May 6-9): All members who are exhibiting or planning to attend, LET’S COLLABORATE. CCC will have a booth and we’d like to support our members. Reach out to the Event SIG link below and let us know if you haven’t already! 
  • CC Summit (Jun 5-6): CFP for CCC breakout sessions will be available soon. Join the Outreach Committee call to discuss more.

For any questions regarding CCC events, email Events SIG.

Got Content?

You can submit your request via the CCC Content Request Form.

Covered content:

  • Blog post
  • Social post
  • Webinar
  • Newsletter
  • Case study
  • Meet up
  • Other

Submit content request

CCC Technical Advisory

The year is off to a strong start in the technical community. We are anchoring our contributions on a common view that by working together as a community we can make the world more secure with Confidential Computing than we could as individuals or individual companies. Our work is organized into three streams: Projects, Ecosystem, and Community. By the end of this year, we will be able to say: 

Projects: As an open-source organization, we helped our projects grow.

  • We coached our projects to adopt security best practices according to OpenSSF guidance (best practices badge).
  • We actively mentored our projects on how to gain adoption.
  • We facilitated collaboration for CCC projects including with the Linux Kernel 

Ecosystem: As security practitioners, we informed security and privacy compliance, standards, and research.

  • We identified influential compliance organizations & appropriately recommended CC in public documents.
  • We evolved understanding of attestation and aligned on protocols and formats.
  • We engaged with academia to encourage and publicize CC research and study.

Community: Our community is growing and healthy.

  • We encouraged our projects to take LF Inclusive Open Source training.
  • We have sought out and welcomed new contributors
    • by representing CCC at conferences
    • facilitating project issues and pull requests
    • by participating in mentorship programs such LFX Mentorship, Outreachy, and GSoC to ramp new people in our SIGs and committees

It’s a full year of work ahead of us, but with the active contributions of each of us, we’re going to accomplish each of these goals! 

Take LF Exclusive Training

Technical Community

Searchable Glossary of Confidential Computing Terms
We’re creating a glossary of the standardized terminology, and communicating with other regulatory bodies like the CSA to use this glossary as the field standard. We welcome contributions to the CCC Glossary Repository for review and discussion now. These terms will be available directly on the CCC website shortly following that process. 

Introducing the New Kernel SIG

The CCC is excited to announce the development of a new Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on the Kernel. 

This SIG aims to:

Facilitate dialog between Linux kernel and Confidential Computing subject matter experts:

  • to facilitate direction for topics that need formal collaboration,
  • to have an additional venue to facilitate direction for topics that are stalled on LKML, which would benefit from higher bandwidth communication,
  • to have a common place to record decisions and formalize the output for others to reference,

and to introduce new technical topics emerging in either domain, e.g., attestation mechanisms approaching standardization.

Learn more about the Kernel SIG and how you can contribute to its foundational goals. 

Kernel SIG Proposal

Engage Your Legal Teams in Our GRC Efforts

We’re calling on members to involve their legal teams in our Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) initiatives: you can join the GRC mailing list to learn more. These efforts are focused on developing Patterns for Confidential Computing that align with common regulation standards, and sector-specific regulatory obligations. Your legal team’s input will be invaluable as we strive to ensure that confidential computing technologies meet and exceed regulatory requirements.

Join GRC mailing list.

Open Source Dashboards

Soon, all Linux Subfoundation Open Source Projects may be featured on the LFX Insights platform, integrated with new insights for projects from the amazing CLOMonitor. This advancement promises to provide CCC members with critical data on project documentation, cybersecurity readiness, and more. Here are just a few of the important metrics that projects will be evaluated by:


Comprehensive Documentation and Licensing Checks: Ensures projects have detailed README files and clear open-source licenses, facilitating easier adoption and compliance.

Security and Dependency Management: Offers vulnerability scanning and dependency analysis, helping projects identify and mitigate potential security risks before they become issues.

Diverse and Active Community Engagement: Measures contributor diversity and issue engagement, highlighting the project’s inclusivity and responsiveness to community feedback.

Code Health Monitoring: Tracks codebase activity, including commit frequency and issue resolution times, to gauge ongoing development and maintainability.

Project Vitality Indicators: Analyzes release frequency and adoption rates, providing insights into the project’s momentum, popularity, and impact within the open-source ecosystem.

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