Supporting Confidential Workloads with SPIRE

Explore the integration of confidential computing with SPIRE in this 20-minute conference talk from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2022. Delve into the potential benefits and challenges of using confidential computing to enhance workload protection and strengthen attestation mechanisms. Learn about the experience of implementing confidential computing support in SPIRE, including deriving selectors and running components within trusted execution environments. Discover how these advancements can be achieved while minimizing changes to SPIRE operations and application development workflows. Gain insights into the evolving threat model and understand the tradeoffs involved in this integration. The presentation covers an introduction to confidential computing, drivers for integration, challenges faced, SPIRE's role, workload considerations, integration process, and includes a demonstration.