Google recently introduced Asylo, an open source framework for confidential computing. The framework is intended to give developers the ability to build portable applications that can be deployed on a variety of software and hardware backends.
With Asylo, you can access Docker images through Google Container Registry that include the dependencies you need to run your container from anywhere. The platform’s flexibility lets you take advantage of various hardware architectures that offer TEE support without having to modify your source code.
Benefits of Asylo
Asylo is intended, first and foremost, as a platform that is easy to navigate and use. It’s meant to provide a straightforward approach to creating apps that take advantage of the security properties of TEEs. You don’t need to learn a new programming model or rewrite your app in order to take advantage of the platform. If you have a basic tech base in place, the process should feel fairly comfortable.
Asylo applications also don’t need to be aware of the intricacies of specific TEE implementations in order to function. Instead, you can port your apps across different enclave backends without having to make any code changes. And your apps can run on basically any environment, from your laptop to a virtual machine in an on-premises server to an instance in the cloud. Google is even exploring the possibility of future backends based on industry-leading hardware technologies. So essentially, the company is committed to making deployments as portable and flexible as possible.
In addition to those benefits, Asylo is also available as an open source framework. This means that anyone can take advantage of confidential computing technology and the capabilities should continue to evolve rapidly over time.
How to get started
If you’re interested in getting started with Asylo, you can download the sources and pre-built container image directly from the Google Container Registry. There are samples in the container that you should check out and then expand upon or use them as a guide when building your own apps from scratch.
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