Confidential Computing: Google Cloud Security, Project Zero and AMD Come Together to Secure Sensitive Workloads

4551
Of your peers have already read this article.
3:00 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
At Google Cloud, we believe that the protection of our customers’ sensitive data is paramount, and encryption is a powerful mechanism to help achieve this goal. For years, we have supported encryption in transit when our customers ingest their data to bring it to the cloud. We’ve also long supported encryption at rest, for all customer content stored in Google Cloud.
To complete the full data protection lifecycle, we can protect customer data when it’s processed through our Confidential Computing portfolio. Confidential Computing products from Google Cloud protect data in use by performing computation in a hardware isolated environment that is encrypted with keys managed by the processor and unavailable to the operator. These isolated environments help prevent unauthorized access or modification of applications and data while in use, thereby increasing the security assurances for organizations that manage sensitive and regulated data in public cloud infrastructure.
Secure isolation has always been a critical component of our cloud infrastructure; with Confidential Computing, this isolation is cryptographically reinforced. Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing products leverage security components in AMD EPYC™ processors including AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology.
Building trust in Confidential Computing through industry collaboration
Part of our mission to bring Confidential Computing technology to more cloud workloads and services is to make sure that the hardware and software used to build these technologies is continuously reviewed and tested. We evaluate different attack vectors to help ensure Google Cloud Confidential Computing environments are protected against a broad range of attacks. As part of this evaluation, we recognize that the secure use of our services and the Internet ecosystem as a whole depends on interactions with applications, hardware, software, and services that Google doesn’t own or operate.
The Google Cloud Security team, Google Project Zero, and the AMD firmware and product security teams collaborated for several months to conduct a detailed review of the technology and firmware that powers AMD Confidential Computing technology. This review covered both Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) capable CPUs, and the next generation of Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) capable CPUs which protect confidential VMs against the hypervisor itself. The goal of this review was to work together and analyze the firmware and technologies AMD uses to help build Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing services to further build trust in these technologies.
This in-depth review focused on the implementation of the AMD secure processor in the third generation AMD EPYC processor family delivering SEV-SNP. SNP further improves the posture of confidential computing using technology that removes the hypervisor from the trust boundary of the guest, allowing customers to treat the Cloud Service Provider as another untrusted party. The review covered several AMD secure processor components and evaluated multiple different attack vectors. The collective group reviewed the design and source code implementation of SEV, wrote custom test code, and ran hardware security tests, attempting to identify any potential vulnerabilities that could affect this environment.

Working on this review, the security teams identified and confirmed potential issues of varying severity. AMD was diligent in fixing all applicable issues and now offers updated firmware through its OEM channels. Google Cloud’s AMD-based Confidential Computing solutions now include all the mitigations implemented during the security review.
“At Google, we believe that investing in security research outside of our own platforms is a critical step in keeping organizations across the broader ecosystem safe,” said Royal Hansen, vice president of Security Engineering at Google. “At the end of the day, we all benefit from a secure ecosystem that organizations rely on for their technology needs and that is why we’re incredibly appreciative of our strong collaboration with AMD on these efforts.”
“Together, AMD and Google Cloud are continuing to advance Confidential Computing, helping enterprises to move sensitive workloads to the cloud with high levels of privacy and security, without compromising performance,” said Mark Papermaster, AMD’s executive vice president and chief technology officer. ”Continuously investing in the security of these technologies through collaboration with the industry is critical to providing customer transformation through Confidential Computing. We’re thankful to have partnered with Google Cloud and the Google Security teams to advance our security technology and help shape future Confidential Computing innovations to come.”
Reviewing trusted execution environments for security is difficult given the closed-source firmware and proprietary hardware components. This is why research and collaborations such as this are critical to improve the security of foundational components that support the broader Internet ecosystem. AMD and Google believe that transparency helps provide further assurance to customers adopting Confidential Computing, and to that end AMD is working toward a model of open source security firmware.
With the analysis now complete and the vulnerabilities addressed, the AMD and Google security teams agree that the AMD firmware which enables Confidential Computing solutions meets an elevated security bar for customers, as the firmware design updates mitigate several bug classes and offer a way to recover from vulnerabilities. More importantly, the review also found that Confidential VMs are protected against a broad range of attacks described in the review.
Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing portfolio
The Google Cloud Confidential VMs, Dataproc Confidential Compute, and Confidential GKE Nodes have enabled high levels of security and privacy to address our customers’ data protection needs without compromising usability, performance, and scale. Our mission is to make this technology ubiquitous across the cloud. Confidential VMs run on hosts with AMD EPYC processors which feature AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). Incorporating SEV into Confidential VMs provide benefits and features including:
Isolation: Memory encryption keys are generated by the AMD Secure Processor during VM creation and reside solely within the AMD Secure Processor. Other VM encryption keys such as for disk encryption can be generated and managed by an external key manager or in Google Cloud HSM. Both sets of these keys are not accessible by Google Cloud, offering strong isolation.
Attestation: Confidential VMs use Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) attestation. Every time a Confidential VM boots, a launch attestation report event is generated and posted to customer cloud logging, which gives administrators the opportunity to act as necessary.
Performance: Confidential Computing offers high performance for demanding computational tasks. Enabling Confidential VM has little or no impact on most workloads.
The future of Confidential Computing and secure platforms
While there are no absolutes in computer security, collaborative research efforts help uncover security vulnerabilities that can emerge in complex environments and help to prevent Confidential Computing solutions from threats today and into the future. Ultimately, this helps us increase levels of trust for customers.
We believe Confidential Computing is an industry-wide effort that is critical for securing sensitive workloads in the cloud and are grateful to AMD for their continued collaboration on this journey.
To read the full security review, visit this page.
Acknowledgments
We thank the many Google security team members who contributed to this ongoing security collaboration and review, including James Forshaw, Jann Horn and Mark Brand.
We are grateful for the open collaboration with AMD engineers, and wish to thank David Kaplan, Richard Relph and Nathan Nadarajah for their commitment to product security. We would also like to thank AMD leadership: Ab Nacef, Prabhu Jayanna, Hugo Romero, Andrej Zdravkovic and Mark Papermaster for their support of this joint effort.
Five Ways Cloud Computing Helps Companies Optimize Operations and Lower IT Costs

4786
Of your peers have already read this article.
1:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
There is no one way to recover. The past year has seen unprecedented challenges for business across the world, with social distancing and quarantine measures forcing many organizations to quickly adapt to remote working. A new report from BCG Platinion, titled “Finding a New Normal in the Cloud”, points out that while companies have done well to survive so far, the overall business environment is still a tough one with contracted economies and lowered revenues. CIOs have to find the right balance between technological innovation and lowering their cash burn rate.
The report identifies five key ways in which companies can use cloud computing to optimize their operations and reduce overall IT costs by as much as 10%.
1. Go beyond VPN
The BCG Platinion report states that companies need “rapid, efficient, highly scalable, and device agnostic solutions”. Traditionally, when employees had to work offsite, companies provided them with VPNs. But the sheer scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown these solutions to be expensive, slow, inconvenient, and hard to manage when entire workforces are working remotely.
Instead, BCG Platinion emphasizes the need for cloud-based solutions such as BeyondCorp Enterprise for more secure, more effective, lower cost remote access at scale. BeyondCorp Enterprise offers customers a zero trust platform for simple and secure access with continuous end-to-end protection that can be used on any device at any time. Deliveroo, a global food delivery company headquartered in the UK, uses BeyondCorp Enterprise to bring the zero trust model to its distributed workforce.
“Having secure access to applications and associated data is critical for our business,” says Vaughn Washington, VP of Engineering at Deliveroo. “With BeyondCorp Enterprise, we manage security at the app level, which removes the need for traditional VPNs and associated risks.”1
With a low cost cloud subscription model, BeyondCorp Enterprise eliminates the need for hardware, operating, and maintenance costs that come with VPN solutions and can also enable organizations to offer protection to the extended workforce at a fraction of the cost. BCG Platinion estimates that solutions like BeyondCorp Enterprise can save companies as much as 50% versus the cost of a traditional VPN.
2. Use SaaS to keep productivity up
With so much of the workforce fragmented due to social distancing measures, the need for seamless, efficient collaboration is greater than ever. According to BCG Platinion, a fully functional Software-as-a-Service productivity solution such as Google Workspace helps to “alleviate the traditional costs and burdens around availability, backup, and maintenance of on-premise collaboration infrastructure.” BCG Platinion analysts estimate that adopting a SaaS solution can lower computing costs for end users by up to 35%.
But working in the cloud does more than lower costs. The BCG Platinion report cites a 2020 study from Forrester that found adopting Google Workspace boosted revenue growth by 1.5%, reduced the need for on-demand tech support by 20%, and cut the risk of data breaches by more than 95%. Over the last year, companies of all sizes have looked on the conditions of the pandemic as an opportunity to change the way they work.
“Airbus has spent the past year thinking about what it actually means to return to work and we’re looking to support greater flexibility with Google Workspace in a leading role,” says Andrew Plunkett, Airbus Vice President Digital Workplace. “In 2020, we held 5.6M Google Meet sessions and we now have more than 70,000 shared Drives where people collaborate. Google Workspace has changed the way people work at Airbus and that will continue as the solution empowers the hybrid work reality.”2
3. Reduce IT overhead and management costs with cloud-first devices
Working in the cloud can be made even more effective with devices specifically designed for the cloud, says the BCG Platinion report. “Cloud-native devices such as Google’s Chromebooks and Chromeboxes are cost-effective, easy to deploy, simple to use, and highly secure,” says BCG Platinion. Additionally, with “thin client” devices, companies can save on hardware costs compared with traditional laptops and desktops.The report suggests that a thin client approach can produce savings of up to 25% in end-user technology and support.
Organizations and businesses of all sizes have found that Chrome OS and devices have greatly enhanced their capacity to work together in even the most challenging circumstances. Chrome OS provides employees with a modern experience and devices that stay fast, have built-in security, deploy quickly, and reduce the total cost of ownership. “Chromebooks are simple-to-use and cost-effective devices that do everything that our staff need them to do, which is mainly accessing Google Workspace online,” says Henry Lewis, Head of Platform for the London Borough of Hackney. “As soon as the Grab and Go Chromebooks were available, they were well used every day.”3
4. Lift and shift for easier transitions
While migrating to the cloud is a priority for many organizations to succeed, it does not have to happen all at once and in the same way. A total cloud migration can be a huge undertaking, involving redesigns of architecture and refactoring of applications. For many organizations, this process can take several months, even years.
But in times like these, CIOs need to make decisions quickly and reduce cash burn as much as possible. When resources are stretched and time is tight, BCG Platinion recommends a “lift-and-shift” approach for minimal disruption. With Google Compute Engine, for example, organizations can simply rehost their existing workloads on virtual machines without transformation. BCG Platinion reports that moving non-critical workloads to the cloud with lift-and-shift approaches can reduce IT spend by as much as 4% in just three months. Additionally, a quick, effective migration paves the way for more advanced IT infrastructure changes, creating effects that ripple long into the future.
5. Make data work for you with the cloud
Data is central to any industry and making the most out of it is more important now than ever before. With business as usual upended by the pandemic, organizations have turned to data for urgent tasks like demand forecasting or predicting supply-chain disruptions. A McKinsey report from last year points out that while many organisations had already started to engage with analytics and AI technologies, their progress was dramatically accelerated by the urgency of the pandemic: “Analytics capabilities that once might have taken these organizations months or years to build came to life in a matter of weeks.”
With the right setup a company can use data to drive efficiencies, respond quickly to its customers and open new markets. But big wins require huge amounts of information and powerful analytics, which means that effective data handling can be very difficult and expensive to do with on-premises architecture.
Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure minimizes infrastructure costs while opening up cutting edge techniques like machine learning for greater insight. The BCG Platinion report found that using a cloud-based data platform was not only cheaper and more efficient for businesses, but could result in a 70% increase in “effectiveness” which it defined as increased sales, lower costs of procured goods, and reduced inventory holding costs. “Moving to cloud provides competitive advantage as you scale innovation, accelerating the creation of new services to keep ahead of the competition,” explains Norbert Faure, Managing Director, Platinion Western Europe at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
The key mission of any data platform is to make sure that the right people have access to the right information at the right time. Google Cloud helps to unify data across the entire business, increase agility, and innovate faster with a range of products. BigQuery runs complex analytics at infinite scale while helping organizations save up to 34% on the total cost of ownership compared with alternative cloud-based data warehouse solutions.4 Cloud Spanner provides a fully managed relational database that operates at 99.999% availability. Meanwhile, with Vertex AI, businesses can access the same groundbreaking machine learning tools that Google uses itself for unprecedented insight on a unified AI platform. “The whole Google Cloud suite of products accelerates the process of getting established and up and running, so we can perform the ‘bread-and-butter’ work of data science,” says David Herberich, VP, Head of Data at fintech startup Branch.5
Minimize costs today, innovate for tomorrow
As the world recovers from the pandemic, continued success depends on staying nimble and adaptive, argues the BCG Platinion report. Cloud computing can make companies more resilient by helping them to keep costs low, reducing overall IT spend by as much as 10% overall according to BCG Platinion. “For CIOs, cloud migrations can offer important near-term savings and benefits, while also reinvigorating progress toward the long-term goal of digital transformation.“
To learn more, read the full report from BCG Platinion.
1. BeyondCorp Enterprise: Introducing a safer era of computing
2. Building the future of work with Google Workspace
3. Hackney Council: Empowering 4,000 staff to keep serving their community from home
4. The Economic Advantages of Google BigQuery versus Alternative Cloud-based EDW Solutions
5. Fintech startup, Branch makes data analytics easy with BigQuery
Deep Dive into Google Cloud’s Security Track at the Next 21

3037
Of your peers have already read this article.
4:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
In every industry, in every part of the world, cybersecurity concerns continue to grow in the wake of attacks on critical infrastructure and the software supply chain. Governments and businesses of all sizes recognize that they must do more to protect their employees, customers and citizens.
But doing more of the same, like putting security band-aids on legacy infrastructure, is no longer helpful or productive. We need an enduring commitment, in products, people and monetary terms, to drive meaningful improvements in our collective security posture. Google recently announced a $10 billion investment to advance the security of governments around the world, and by extension, help enterprises and organizations to do the same.
Over the past year, Google Cloud has been delivering on our vision of Invisible Security for our customers, where capabilities are continuously engineered into both our trusted cloud platform and market-leading products to bring the best of Google’s security to wherever your IT assets are. But being a provider of best-in-class technology is not enough. We want to share our expertise to help organizations with their security transformation and offer even more ways to accelerate these essential improvements. This week, at Google Cloud Next ‘21, we’re sharing the first of what will be many more steps in advancing these efforts.
Introducing our Cybersecurity Action Team

While access to the latest, most advanced security technology is important, the expertise of what it will take to become resilient in the face of today’s risk and threat environment is foundational.
Today, we’re announcing the formation of the Google Cybersecurity Action Team. The Google Cybersecurity Action Team marshals experts from across Google to form what we believe will be the world’s premier security advisory team. It has a singular mission to support the security and digital transformation of governments, critical infrastructure, enterprises and small businesses.

Building on existing security solutions engineering efforts, today the Google Cybersecurity Action Team announced a security and resilience framework that delivers a roadmap for a comprehensive security management program aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework using cloud technologies from Google Cloud and our partners.
“Google Cloud has been a critical partner in the BBVA security journey, helping us protect our customers’ sensitive and proprietary data with modern frameworks like zero trust and secure-by-default products like Google Workspace,” said Alvaro Garrido, Chief Security Officer at BBVA. “We look forward to the strategic services and guidance the Google Cybersecurity Action Team will deliver as we continue on our security transformation.”
Learn more about the Cybersecurity Action Team here.
Announcing a safer way to work

Bringing you the expertise and hands-on guidance to help with your security transformation is just one valuable step. We recognize that too many organizations can’t wait any longer to begin their modernization efforts – they need a new baseline, and they need it now.
That’s why today, we’re announcing the launch of our Google Work Safer offering, designed to help organizations, their employees, and partners collaborate and communicate securely and privately in today’s hybrid work environment. Work Safer provides companies with access to best-in-class security for email, meetings, messages, documents, and more. It uniquely brings together the cloud-native, zero-trust solutions of Google Workspace with BeyondCorp Enterprise for secure access with integrated threat and data protection. For customers who want secure devices, Work Safer includes Pixel phones managed with Android Enterprise, Chrome Enterprise Upgrade, and HP Chromebooks. Customers can also leverage Google’s Titan Security Keys for account protection, reCAPTCHA Enterprise for website fraud prevention, Chronicle for security analytics, and a variety of migration services for a seamless transition.
The program is designed to meet the needs of all organizations, including small businesses, enterprises and public sector institutions, many of which are reliant on legacy technology and often lack expertise to fully address rising security challenges associated with hybrid work. To learn more, visit our Work Safer homepage.
Advancing our trusted cloud with new security capabilities
Above all, security has been and continues to be the cornerstone of our product strategy. There are three critical areas where Google Cloud’s capabilities can make a meaningful difference for any business’ or government’s digital security transformation:

At Next’ 21, we’re introducing new security products and partnerships that will enable you to:
- Protect your employees with new zero trust access capabilities: We’re delivering new features that expand the surface area for our zero trust access solution, BeyondCorp Enterprise, to cover all your apps – both modern and legacy. The new client connector, now in preview, enables identity and context-aware access to non-web applications running in Google Cloud and non-Google Cloud environments. We are also making it easier for admins to diagnose access failure, triage events, and unblock users with the new Policy Troubleshooter feature. You can learn more about both of these new enhancements in the live BeyondCorp Enterprise demo on October 13.
- Improve your detection and response capabilities: We announced a new collaboration with Cybereason for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) across endpoints, networks, cloud and workspaces. The combination of these capabilities delivers a cloud-native XDR solution, Cybereason XDR powered by Chronicle, that automates prevention for common attacks, guides analysts through security operations and incident response, and enables threat hunting with precision at a pace never before achieved. We are also deepening the integration between Chronicle and Security Command Center (SCC) on GCP. New integrations in preview centralize alerts and investigative workflows across the two platforms, and enable threat-specific pivots by enriching SCC alerts with intelligence on associated threat actors and entities.
- Automate and bolster protection of your sensitive data: Automatic DLP, now in preview, is a prime example of how we are making Invisible Security a reality. It’s a game-changing capability that discovers and classifies sensitive data for all the BigQuery projects across your entire organization without you needing to do a single thing. We’re also introducing Ubiquitous Data Encryption, a solution which combines our generally available Confidential Computing, External Key Management, and Cloud Storage products to seamlessly encrypt data as it’s sent to the cloud. Using your External Key Management solution, data can now only be decrypted and run in a confidential VM environment, greatly limiting potential exposure.
- Protect your IP and implement a zero trust software supply chain: Today, we’re building on our zero trust software supply chain with new launches. Cloud Build is SLSA Level -1 compliant by default, with scripted builds and available provenance. With the new Build Integrity feature, Cloud Build automatically generates a verifiable build manifest that includes a signed certificate describing the sources that went into the build, the hashes of artifacts used, and other parameters. Additionally, Binary Authorization’s integration with Cloud Build makes it easy to set up deploy-time constraints. You can also now easily pair Binary Authorization with Cloud Run to ensure only trusted images make it to production. These integrations are now generally available.
- Protect your users and brand: We recently announced the preview of Cloud Armor Bot Management, which integrates Cloud Armor and reCAPTCHA Enterprise. You can enable protection without any server-side changes to your applications, and because detection and enforcement happens in-line, at the edge of Google’s network, you can mitigate threats before they have a chance to impact your applications, whether they run on GCP, on premise, or in a hybrid or multicloud deployment.
- Ensure secure collaboration: Today, Google Workspace is also introducing new security features. Client-side encryption for Google Meet, in beta, gives customers direct control of encryption keys and the identity service used to access keys. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Google Chat, in beta, helps prevent sensitive information from leaking outside of your organization. Check out the blog post from Google Workspace to learn more.
As we head into three days of great content and engagements from our security and technology teams across Google Cloud at Next ‘21, we want to leave you with this: You are not alone on your security journey. Our goal is to ensure that every day, you are making your organization safer because you have partnered with us. Please make sure to watch our security experts, customers, and partners in our track sessions to go deep on the topics and products that matter most to you.
Google Cloud Content Protection: Unlock the Power of CSAP for Security

1294
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:45 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Content production is increasingly happening in the cloud. While moving a creative process that spans three centuries into the modern era brings challenges and risks, MovieLabs is one organization that takes digital transformation seriously.
A nonprofit research and development group founded by a consortium of the major Hollywood studios, MovieLabs describes their mission as “exploring innovative solutions to industry challenges shared by both our member studios and the broader production, post-production and distribution ecosystem.”
In more than 50 pages of densely-packed ideas and principles, MovieLab’s The Evolution of Media Production lays out an ambitious and revelatory vision for streamlining media production in the cloud. The key themes are summarized in 10 declarative statements, which envision a new modality for media production by the year 2030:
- All assets are created or ingested straight into the cloud and do not need to be moved.
- Applications come to the media.
- Propagation and distribution of assets is a “publish” function.
- Archives are deep libraries with access policies matching speed, availability and security to the economics of the cloud.
- Preservation of digital assets includes the future means to access them and edit them.
- Every individual on a project is identified and verified, and their access permissions are efficiently and consistently managed.
- All media creation happens in a highly secure environment that adapts rapidly to changing threats.
- Individual media elements are referenced, accessed, tracked and interrelated using a universal linking system.
- Media workflows are non-destructive and dynamically created using common interfaces, underlying data formats and metadata.
- Workflows are designed around real-time iteration and feedback.
The four bolded statements above are further explored in a follow-up whitepaper from MovieLabs, The Evolution of Production Security, which likewise offers six statements about what secure production in the cloud should look like:
- Security is Intrinsic and does not Inhibit Creative Processes
- The Security Architecture Addresses Challenges Specific to Cloud Workflows
- Production Workflows, Processes, and Assets are Secure, even on Untrusted Infrastructure
- The Content Owner Controls Security and Workflow Integrity
- The Security Can Be Scaled to Appropriate Levels and Can Integrate
- The Security Architecture Limits the Spread of any Breach and is Adaptable
The key to understanding these two papers is repeated in their titles: Evolution. Neither document is meant to outline solely what’s possible today; rather they are beacons guiding us toward a future in which the movie business is truly transformed by the cloud operating model. That means a future where media productions run much more like software supply chains: with speed, agility, and scale, and without sacrificing availability or security.
The good news is that it is possible to deploy secure production workloads in the cloud today. Using some of the built-in security features of Google Cloud, content producers can achieve Common Security Architecture for Production (CSAP) “Level 100” security for their assets (using the CSAP scale L100-L300).
However, we think that “evolution” word is important. As many companies have learned, operating an infrastructure cloud can be costly and often presents new threat vectors for attackers. Our mission at Google Cloud is to provide scalable, reliable services for traditional IT functions and to accelerate the abilities of every organization to digitally transform its business.
We believe the era of the transformation cloud is dawning, and companies who have been successfully operating in the cloud for years are now looking for ways to reduce costs while maintaining the cloud-scale advantages of agility and global reach. This aligns perfectly with the evolutionary vision of the MovieLabs papers, which envision media workflows changing radically to embrace cloud dynamism without all the unnecessary asset movement and complexity.
An important part of that vision from Google Cloud is that cloud service providers should remain open and interoperable with other clouds and infrastructures.
Here is a quickstart guide to mapping the L100 CSAP requirements to Google Cloud:

As you can see in the diagram, external identity providers (IdPs) such as Okta or Active Directory can serve as core security components of a CSAP L100 architecture. Alternatively, Google Cloud services such as Cloud Identity or Managed AD could be substituted.
Next, Google Cloud’s Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) can be used in combination with Access Context Manager (ACM) to act as the first Policy Enforcement Point. This is an optional step, since it is somewhat redundant with the routing and authorization function performed by the native HP/Teradici Connection Brokers. However, IAP and ACM are core components of Google Cloud’s BeyondCorp architecture, on which CSAP is based. Additionally, adopting IAP with ACM offers productions the ability to swap out the Teradici PCoIP protocol for an alternative, such as Unity’s Parsec, without sacrificing security.
The Teradici Connection Broker is also a Policy Enforcement Point, since groups and role membership can be used to enforce access to specific workstations.
Finally, the identity context for each user is passed through to the storage layer. For some productions, Google Cloud Storage (GCS) buckets may offer enough functionality; GCS offers an S3-compatible API which should make it easy to immediately adopt OSS tools built for S3. Other options for this include the managed NetApp Cloud Volumes and Dell PowerScale for Google Cloud services. Both of these are managed shared storage services which offer file-level access controls using standard SMB/NFS permissions. There are also a variety of third-party filers available in the Google Cloud Marketplace, such as Nasuni. You can read more about those here.
For added security, both NetApp and PowerScale should be configured to use the private services access model in Google Cloud. This effectively limits any external access to these resources by only allowing traffic from user-managed VPCs into the Google-managed and peered VPC.
Following this architecture, you can see how to achieve CSAP L100 compliance by using either only Google Cloud services or a mix of managed and cloud-first services. In either scenario, access is managed through a unified control plane and based on both user identity and role. Zero Trust principles such as context-aware access and dynamic rulesets could further be applied to the Authentication step using either Google Cloud IAP or the equivalent services from Okta, Active Directory, or others.
At this weekend’s National Association of Broadcasters conference, Google experts will be talking about the cloud and content production, and the intersection of AI and media. The journey to 2030 is only just beginning.
VCP Peering and Private Endpoints on Vertex AI to Better Security and Predictions in Near Real-time

4471
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:00 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
One of the biggest challenges when serving machine learning models is delivering predictions in near real-time. Whether you’re a retailer generating recommendations for users shopping on your site, or a food service company estimating delivery time, being able to serve results with low latency is crucial. That’s why we’re excited to announce Private Endpoints on Vertex AI, a new feature in Vertex Predictions. Through VPC Peering, you can set up a private connection to talk to your endpoint without your data ever traversing the public internet, resulting in increased security and lower latency for online predictions.
Configuring VPC Network Peering
Before you make use of a Private Endpoint, you’ll first need to create connections between your VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) network and Vertex AI. A VPC network is a global resource that consists of regional virtual subnetworks, known as subnets, in data centers, all connected by a global network. You can think of a VPC network the same way you’d think of a physical network, except that it’s virtualized within GCP. If you’re new to cloud networking and would like to learn more, check out this introductory video on VPCs.
With VPC Network Peering, you can connect internal IP addresses across two VPC networks, regardless of whether they belong to the same project or the same organization. As a result, all traffic stays within Google’s network.
Deploying Models with Vertex Predictions
Vertex Predictions is a serverless way to serve machine learning models. You can host your model in the cloud and make predictions through a REST API. If your use case requires online predictions, you’ll need to deploy your model to an endpoint. Deploying a model to an endpoint associates physical resources with the model so it can serve predictions with low latency.
When deploying a model to an endpoint, you can specify details such as the machine type, and parameters for autoscaling. Additionally, you now have the option to create a Private Endpoint. Because your data never traverses the public internet, Private Endpoints offer security benefits in addition to reducing the time your system takes to serve the prediction when it receives the request. The overhead introduced by Private Endpoints is minimal, achieving performance nearly identical to DIY serving on GKE or GCE. There is also no payload size limit for models deployed on the private endpoint.
Creating a Private Endpoint on Vertex AI is simple.
In the Models section of the Cloud console, select the model resource you want to deploy.

Next, select DEPLOY TO ENDPOINT

In the window on the right hand side of the console, navigate to the Access section and select Private. You’ll need to add the full name of the VPC network for which your deployment should be peered.

Note that many other managed services on GCP support VPC peering, such as Vertex Training, Cloud SQL, and Firestore. Endpoints is the latest to join that list.
What’s Next?
Now you know the basics of VPC Peering and how to use Private Endpoints on Vertex AI. If you want to learn more about configuring VPCs, check out this overview guide. And if you’re interested to learn more about how to use Vertex AI to support your ML workflow, check out this introductory video. Now it’s time for you to deploy your own ML model to a Private Endpoint for super speedy predictions!
How AI-powered ML Models Helps Run Unemployment Claims Verification at Scale

8364
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:00 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
With unemployment application submissions reaching record numbers over the past year, state and local agencies in the United States have faced the challenge of processing unprecedented numbers of claims per week. The digital infrastructure most agencies have in place is unable to handle this volume, resulting in constituents waiting longer, and bad actors taking advantage of vulnerable systems. The Department of Labor Inspector General estimates that $63 billion in claims distributed is either an improper payment or fraud.
Validating claims also requires secure data sharing with other agencies for document and identity verification. Government leaders need a way to allow case adjudicators to quickly and confidently release backlogged claims, integrate with existing systems, and segment legitimate claims from potentially fraudulent ones — all within limited government budgets — securely and at scale.
Implementing a fraud detection solution on Google Cloud
States were under pressure to release payments, while also filtering out potentially fraudulent claims. SpringML and Google Cloud developed a framework to give adjudicators a reliable verification process that quickly filters potentially fraudulent claims, while processing the remaining claims so benefits reach citizens in a timely manner. SpringML and Google Cloud, applied AI-powered machine learning models to detect anomalous patterns in large datasets. Using Google Cloud tools, SpringML implemented a solution to streamline workflows, improve efficiencies, automate processes and identify potentially fraudulent claims.
SpringML used a variety of Google Cloud products to deliver a fraud detection solution, including:
- Google Cloud Storage to store and manage data
- BigQuery to store tabular data and BigQuery Machine Learning (BQML) to conduct machine learning on that data
- AutoML solutions to build predictive models and risk scoring
- Visualization tools such as Looker and Data Studio to present data and help government leaders make informed decisions.
Implementing machine learning to detect improper payments allows agencies to classify claims as “fraud” or “not fraud” based on the number of flags, as well as prioritize the most urgent claims. Deploying intelligent virtual agents to handle frequently asked questions meant that live agents could focus their time on more challenging cases.
Even once the pandemic is behind us, there will be bad actors trying to take advantage of overwhelmed or legacy systems. We’ve identified a few best practices for agencies managing enormous case loads and looking to improve improper payment analytics:
- Move your systems to the cloud. Many on-premises legacy systems can’t update their applications and scale to meet the volume of claims. Moving to a cloud environment enables rapid solution deployment and ingestion of large amounts of data without fear of overloading the system. The cloud scales with you–cost-effectively and securely.
- Understand patterns in the data. The answer is always in the data — we used deep analysis to help uncover suspicious patterns in large data sets. We implemented unsupervised machine learning to learn behaviors and create configurable rules that adjust to new information that comes into the system. We can uncover patterns that are likely associated with fraud – ones that a human might have missed.
- Use AI/ML tools to automate your existing systems and teams. These tools enable humans to work smarter and more efficiently. We automate anomaly detection and create dashboards for adjudicators to rapidly process claims. We are enabling the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development by implementing automatic calculations and processing of recharge amounts, resulting in faster processing times and fewer human errors. Proactive fraud detection and timely calculation of recharge payment allowed DWD to ensure the benefits reached the right individuals.
- Build flexibility into your systems. We discovered that fraud patterns change over time. For instance,flags for fraud during March-May 2020 were vastly different from those we found in June-July 2020. Google Cloud tools make it easy to continually update algorithms to detect patterns and integrate external data sources.
Using Google Cloud tools, we can update digital infrastructure and incorporate machine learning best practices to help organizations efficiently process large volumes of claims and identify high probability fraudulent ones. SpringML provides consulting and implementation services and industry-specific analytics solutions that deliver high-impact business value to accelerate data-driven digital transformation. Learn more about fraud detection and how to improve improper payments analytics by watching our webinar.
More Relevant Stories for Your Company

Stop Cribbing About Shadow IT and Start Taking Charge Now
Employees use tools at their disposal to get work done, but if these tools (often legacy) hamper collaboration or are inflexible, they’ll turn to less secure options for the sake of convenience. According to Gartner, a third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will come from Shadow IT usage by 2020.

Google Products Helps HMH’s Healthcare Staff Work from Anywhere Efficiently and Securely!
Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) executive Mark Eimer explains how an ambitiously-timed rollout of a comprehensive suite of Google products helped the entire organization—from doctors to IT staff—achieve better security, cultivate a more equitable work environment, and ultimately, improve patient outcomes. How does a recently merged, 17-hospital healthcare system fast-track a platform migration

Strategic Consulting, Training & Implementation Guidelines with Public Sector PSO Helps Governments Stay Compliant
Did you know that by 2025, enterprise IT spending on public cloud computing will overtake traditional IT spending? In fact, 51% of IT spend in application software, infrastructure software, business process services, and system infrastructure will transition to the public cloud, compared to 41% in 20221.. As enterprises continue to

Redefining and Simplifying Security Analytics
Today’s security professionals face not only an ever-expanding list of threats, old and new, but also an excruciating choice of security approaches and tools. Nearly 2000 security vendors are trying to sell to large enterprises and small businesses. Most organizations have already invested heavily in cybersecurity solutions. From firewalls to






