Points Technology Selected for the Working Group of Developing China's TEE-based Confidential Computation Industrial Standard

BEIJING, Dec. 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Points Technology was recently chosen as a member of the development committee for Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) based confidential computation industrial standard, led by China Academy of Information and Communications (CAIC) under Ministry of Information & Industry, together with China Mobile. The committee is composed of other technology leaders, including Ant Financial, Huawei, China Telecom, Datang Telecom, Baidu, Oppo, Tencent, Qualomm, and Qihoo 360. This standard will cover the concepts, technical framework, processes, and functions of confidential computing systems, which indicates that China will take the lead in chartering the cause in filling out blank spaces in new technology for TEE-based confidential computing standards.

According to the statistics from Risk Based Security, the number of data breaches increased by 54% compared to the same period last year by the first half of 2019. 

Facing an increasing number of data leakage incidents, many countries are accelerating the development of data security-related laws and regulations. For instance, the EU introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018; China officially released regulations on the protection of network security level 2.0 this May, and the Draft for Comment on the Data Security Management Measures and the Provisions for the Protection of Children's Personal Information Network were released in the same period. In June, the Draft for Comment of the Measures for the Evaluation of Outbound Security of Personal Information in China was also issued into public.

With the laws and regulations about data protection continuing to be standardized and tightened, institutions and businesses are paying more attention to data security, while ordinary users are increasingly concerned about personal data use and privacy protection.

The core of data security is to protect the data used for computing. Now, through confidential computation, data sources which used to be dispersed and distrusted can be made available and invisible in a trusted technical environment in chips. Therefore, TEE-based confidential computation is becoming a new trend to reduce data risks. It can be widely used in digital finance, the Internet of Things, intelligent manufacturing, supply chain management, and digital assets. Intel, ARM, Google, Ant Financial, Baidu, Huawei and many tech giants are deploying related technologies of secure computing and gradually form related products in the field of confidential computation.

Besides the China standard, in order to better define confidential computation and speed up its development, Alibaba, ARM, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Swiss Pass have jointly formed the Confidential Computing Consortium, and the Linux Foundation oversees the activities of the alliance. The alliance will specifically target cloud services and the hardware ecosystem, and is committed to protecting the security of computing data

Among leading enterprises in this working group, it is notable that Points Technology was also selected into developing TEE-based confidential computation technical framework. In fact, it is not the first time that Points Technology has been chosen by CAIC to work with in the field of developing technical standards. Sarah Zhang, the founder of Points Technology, pointed out that Points' team has gained deep technical understanding in confidential computation as the firm has achieved production level deployment in financial service industry. Solid innovation and practice experience is a booster to gain the right to speak in the industry. Sarah Zhang believes that participation in developing technical standard for the technical framework of a TEE-based confidential computation also help Points Technology to further research and development work in the field and launch more products. Besides participating in the industry standard-making, Points Technology was also awarded 2019 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.

Fubao Zhang, Director of CAIC, said that confidential computing can technically solve the problems of data security and privacy, which will largely stimulate the value of big data and become a new engine of data application and data-driven innovation. We need a unified standard to define confidential computing technical requirements and implementation. Points Technology can contribute solid technical accumulation and rich practical application experience of this working group. On the other hand, CAIC encourages more start-ups which owes world-leading technological advantages to participate in the development of technical standards, which will encourage promote innovations and technology adoptions. 

SOURCE Points