Intel, Thales, and Google Collaborate to Provide End-to-End Data Protection for Sensitive Workloads

[YasirAziz]

By Yasir Aziz,  Senior Director, Trust & Security GTM & Sales 

The cloud is an essential component of modern business operations, with increasingly sensitive data stored and used in cloud environments. This trend brings new challenges for companies, particularly those in highly regulated industries such as healthcare and finance, which must prioritize safeguarding sensitive data and associated workloads. 

Intel collaborated with Google and Thales to address these challenges and provide an enterprise-certifiable platform for end-to-end data protection. This groundbreaking platform offers certifiable controls that enable companies to protect their data fully, ensuring controlled access, security, and compliance for data at rest, in transit and in use. 

Greg Lavender, Intel Executive VP and CTO, shares "Our collaboration with Google and Thales endorses Intel’s commitment to zero trust principles. The combined power of Google’s new cloud offering with hardware-based Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX), Intel’s independent verification service, Intel® Trust Authority, and Thales’ Cipher Trust Data Security Platform provides a robust and secure solution for end-to-end data workload protection."    

Customers can migrate existing workloads with sensitive data or create new workloads needing zero-trust, confidential computing, and confidential AI to this security platform in Google Cloud to broaden data security and attestation and set the proper authorizations. With end-to-end data protection, multiple parties can securely collaborate on various use cases, such as Confidential AI datasets and models, as needed while preserving privacy, confidentiality, and compliance with privacy regulations.  

The Thales CipherTrust Data Security Platform uses Intel Trust Authority as a zero-trust, independent attestation service for advanced security and scalable, confidential computing. The service provides consistent attestation to Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) based on Intel TDX on hardware-isolated virtual machines (VMs). This single, consistent attestation process assures any relying party that the TEE and any data and workloads running within it have not been compromised.  

"Thales and Intel have collaborated to create a comprehensive end-to-end data protection solution designed to meet the needs of Google Cloud Platform customers requiring enhanced data security controls. Intel’s expertise in confidential computing and Thales’s leadership in cybersecurity enable us to bring to the market an unmatched solution providing end-to-end security for confidential workloads. We are proud to work with Intel and Google to enhance trust in confidential computing technology by addressing concerns around data privacy and security for many use cases, today and in the future." Lionel Merrien, VP Innovation and Strategy, Cloud Protection and Licensing activities at Thales. 

Google Cloud also praised the collaboration.  Nelly Porter, Head of Product, Google Cloud Confidential Computing stated that, “Partnerships with providers like Thales, who offer specialized encryption key management and Intel's Trust Authority attestation, provide flexible enhanced confidential computing options for our enterprise customers."   

This collaboration comes as Thales is recognized for its achievements in the Google Cloud ecosystem, receiving the 2024 Google Cloud Data Protection Partner of the Year award for the second year. 

In conclusion, this leading-edge data security protection platform provides enterprises with a secure, reliable solution for protecting their sensitive data and associated workloads. businesses can rest assured that they have the necessary tools to safeguard their most valuable assets. 

Learn more about Intel Trust Authority, End-to-End Data Protection 

Yasir