The data driven world of finance

How financial firms handle, and store finances and data are a far cry from what it used to be about a decade back. For example, in today’s competitive world banks need to be more data-driven than ever before. This is critical to acquire more customers and deliver the best experiences.

“Data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain those customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable as a result.”
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Becoming nimble, accelerating revenues, and improving customer experiences have been the primary drivers for financial firms to implement digital transformation…

For the last decade, smart devices have become increasingly integrated into our society. But as our reliance on these devices grows, so does the probability and potential impact of security breaches. In a move towards improving platform security, smart device manufacturers have started integrating Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) into their products. These modules are small, low-cost crypto-processors that, amongst other security features, provide secure storage of cryptographic keys. TPMs operate in isolation from the main CPU and can only be accessed via a standardized, safe API, set out by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Whenever a cryptographic operation is to…

The amount of data that organizations handle is growing exponentially, and an increasing proportion of this data is sensitive in some way. Whether it is personally identifiable information (PII) covered under GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, or other regulations, valuable intellectual property, or other confidential company data, encryption provides strong protection that renders the data useless should it be stolen by cyber criminals.

Every time you encrypt a piece of data, you need to use an “encryption key”. This encryption key is similar to a password — if you have this key, then you can decrypt the data. Therefore, the key acquires…

Any data that can be used by itself or in combination with other pieces of data to uniquely identify a specific individual is considered as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Traditionally, some of the common examples that have been considered most sensitive PII data are Social Security numbers, mailing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers since each can be used to identify an individual uniquely. However, with an exponential rise in the volume of data collected from social media, mobile devices, websites, and various user tracking technologies, a lot of other secondary data that may not seem like PII data by…

The tech industry is known for a lot of things when it comes to employment within it. Great salaries, amazing benefits, relaxed working atmospheres, cutting edge ideas, the works! Across the globe millions are clamoring to join in on the tech boom and find a career in the most fun industry on the planet.

Finding a job in the tech industry can be rather easy if you have the credentials. But finding the right job is quite a bit more difficult. You see, far too often companies and start-ups advertise certain amenities, salaries, and workplace environments that are contradictory to…

On 6 April 2021, the data security world took a giant leap forward with the launch by Intel® of its 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors — code-named Ice Lake — for use in the next generation of server platforms. As expected, the new processors can handle a range of workloads across networks, cloud, and edge. It offers flexible architecture for a wide-range of applications and built-in hardware acceleration that delivers improved capabilities when executing more complex and diversified workloads.

Of more direct interest, however, Ice Lake is a processor built for security today and for the new demands of…

The confidential computing market is heating up and 2021 has already delivered an important new platform technology in the form of Intel® Xeon® 3rd Generation Scalable Processors that include support for Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX).

Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager (CCM 3.0) is a comprehensive solution designed from the ground up to be best in class and to provide a “single pane of glass” through which you can manage all your confidential computing deployments. Here we describe some of the features and attributes that make CCM 3.0 the most flexible and intuitive enterprise solution available for confidential computing deployments.

Data Security

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Just under five years ago Fortanix was founded on the vision of a new approach to security: Confidential Computing. A few years and many technical challenges later, this vision took a big step forward today with the announcement by Intel, Fortanix strategic partner and investor, of their Ice Lake 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. This seems like a good time to step back and look where we have come from and what lies ahead.

From Runtime Encryption to Confidential Computing

Fortanix started with a simple observation. We were going to great lengths to protect data at rest and in motion, but then what happened when…