DR Reading list
(and other things we find interesting)
DR White Paper
Scaling Confidential Computing for enterprise applications
Confidential Computing (CC) has gained popularity in recent years to secure data and computation, especially for sensitive applications in the cloud. Compared with other security approaches, CC demonstrates distinct advantages such as delivering high security with minimal performance impact. However, CC is not yet a broadly accessible solution and more work is needed to scale its implementation beyond bespoke applications. Future work to address accessibility and scalability include abstraction frameworks to hide hardware and cryptographic complexities, new tools and middleware to support large scale deployments, and platforms with built-in CC capabilities for general purpose applications. Datica Research principals, who were early contributors that led the invention of Confidential Computing, are working on scaling CC to meet today’s enterprise security challenges.
Lit review
From Whit Diffie and Marty Hellman's New Directions in Cryptography to our friend, Eckhard Delfs', detailed examination of TVMs across four CPU architectures, we love to learn new ideas. We hope you do as well.
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(If you have literature to share, we'd love to hear from you as well.)
Cyber Hard Problems
DR Principals led the development of the National Academy of Sciences 2025 list of Cyber Hard Problems. More about the project here. Download the Cyber Hard Problems book from the National Academies Press.
On Cryptography
Cryptography has changed the world. Let's start with the classics.
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Diffie and Hellman showed us what wonderful things we could do with really good math and clever scheming.
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Encryption reduces your security problem to key management, and key management is really hard. Check out this paper on crypto sealing.
On hardware enclaves
​There's no shortage of literature on secure enclaves. We like these:
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Our good friend, Eckhard Delfs' up-to-date examination (as of Feb 25) of hardware security offerings across the four CPU architectures.
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DR Principals are principal developers and contributors to the Confidential Computing Certifier Framework to make CC transparent across processor architectures.
On trusted computing
The Trusted Computing Group (co-founded by DR principals) is a good place to start.
On security policies (for machines)
Our good friend, Fred Schneider's, paper on Science of Security is a good place to start.