Intel, Decentriq and Swiss Re Improve Data Privacy

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Swiss Re, a leading global reinsurance provider, is working with Decentriq’s confidential computing-based platform powered by Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) to help secure data privacy while performing analytics on sensitive datasets. This collaboration allows Swiss Re to apply Intel SGX technology to its cloud services to provide new levels of protection to data in use, harnessing the industry’s most tested and most widely deployed hardware-based data center-trusted execution environment.

“As a data and technology-driven risk knowledge company, Swiss Re intends to make use of confidential computing technologies to better protect sensitive data and gain actionable insights. I’m optimistic this will continue to allow us to access and analyze data in new ways to help unlock new forms of value creation in risk protection today and in the future," says Sebastian Eckhardt, expert business analyst, Swiss Re.

In a world where organizations are continuously storing and sharing sensitive data, from credit card transactions to medical records, protecting the most sensitive of assets is essential. Decentriq is providing security by encrypting applications and data everywhere – at rest, in motion and in use – with its technology built upon Intel SGX. This enables organizations like Swiss Re, that have traditionally faced challenges gaining access to datasets that contain sensitive information, to extract analytical, actionable insights from this data without impacting consumer privacy.

In a proof of concept in marine insurance, Swiss Re used a shipping dataset from a supply chain data aggregator to process data where, typically, data privacy and competitive concerns have presented barriers to access. In Swiss Re’s evaluation, it found improvements in performance, time to market and security using Decentriq’s confidential computing-based platform powered by Intel SGX.

Intel SGX is one of the main technologies powering confidential computing today, enabling new cloud use cases that are particularly beneficial for organizations that deal with or aim to exchange sensitive data with others on a regular basis. It helps protect data at all stages by performing computation in a hardware-based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). These isolated environments help secure data, intellectual property and code to help prevent unauthorized access of applications and data while they are in use.

As the insurance industry evolves into an even more data-driven service, gaining access to confidential datasets from trusted sources will drive new business segments, transparency into supply chains and more succinct insurance pricing models.

Confidential Computing, powered by Intel SGX technology and delivered by Decentriq, helps unlock data sources that were previously unattainable in real time. Not only does it significantly improve privacy protection of all data, it also enables companies to extract actionable insights from this data and optimize performance and time to market. This allows organizations to gain access to a variety of datasets without jeopardizing consumer privacy.