One of the arms races happening in the public cloud involves creating the most secure environment for hosting applications and data. Google’s Nelly Porter, a director of product management at Google, is heavily focused on this area. Confidential computing, a technique used by Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to protect data, is a key focus for Porter. This includes using hardware controls from partners like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia to ensure strong cryptographic isolation for customer workloads.
Porter emphasizes the importance of confidentiality in computing, which safeguards customer and user privacy when processing data. Additionally, she discusses how various security initiatives such as zero trust and secure-by-design principles align with confidential computing to provide robust assurances and guarantees for data protection.
Furthermore, Porter believes that artificial intelligence (AI) can greatly contribute to confidential computing by providing valuable insights into data analysis and threat detection. She also envisions the use of generative AI (GenAI) to simplify workload deployment on GCP, potentially reducing deployment times and streamlining IT tasks.
However, Porter acknowledges the security implications of using GenAI, especially in how it handles data and configurations for AI models. Confidential computing plays a vital role in ensuring the privacy and security of data used by AI technologies like GenAI.