Hardware-Enabled Security: Enabling a Layered Approach to Platform Security for Cloud and Edge Computing Use Cases

Published

May 4, 2022

Author(s)

Murugiah Souppaya, Michael Bartock, Karen Scarfone, Ryan Savino, Tim Knoll, Uttam Shetty, Mourad Cherfaoui, Raghu Yeluri, Don Banks, Akash Malhotra, Michael Jordan, Dimitrios Pendarakis, Peter Romness

Abstract

In today's cloud data centers and edge computing, attack surfaces have shifted and, in some cases, significantly increased. At the same time, hacking has become industrialized, and most security control implementations are not coherent or consistent. The foundation of any data center or edge computing security strategy should be securing the platform on which data and workloads will be executed and accessed. The physical platform represents the first layer for any layered security approach and provides the initial protections to help ensure that higher-layer security controls can be trusted. This report explains hardware-enabled security techniques and technologies that can improve platform security and data protection for cloud data centers and edge computing.

Citation

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR) - 8320

Report Number

8320

NIST Pub Series

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8320

Local Download

Keywords

confidential computing, container, hardware-enabled security, hardware security module (HSM), secure enclave, trusted execution environment (TEE), trusted platform module (TPM), virtualization.

Citation

Souppaya, M. , Bartock, M. , Scarfone, K. , Savino, R. , Knoll, T. , Shetty, U. , Cherfaoui, M. , Yeluri, R. , Banks, D. , Malhotra, A. , Jordan, M. , Pendarakis, D. and Romness, P. (2022), Hardware-Enabled Security: Enabling a Layered Approach to Platform Security for Cloud and Edge Computing Use Cases, NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8320, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=934427 (Accessed October 9, 2025)