Technical Overview

Separate the master-secret boundary from the host, and make workload access conditional on attestation and governance.

Core components

• HSM core: holds master secrets and enforces permitted operations.
• Confidential workloads: use derived secrets inside Confidential Computing environments.
• Attestation verification: validates workload evidence before access is granted.
• Governance and tooling: establish approved workloads, roles and operational procedures.

Access flow

1. Governance establishes the allowed actors, actions and workload whitelist.
2. A workload produces attestation evidence for its execution environment.
3. The attestation is verified and evaluated against the HSM's access rules.
4. The HSM permits the approved operation and releases a short-lived or limited-scope derived key.
5. The confidential workload uses the derived key without receiving the master secret.

Architecture and implementation

HSM Attest describes the complete solution architecture. The documentation distinguishes this from CCHSM, the deliverable implementation components. Actual deployment requires compatible HSM firmware, an appropriate confidential-computing platform and a governed operational environment.

System Overview and component diagram · Technical Background · Documentation Map