Confidental VMs, Assured Workloads for Government services are launched Credit: Getty Images Google Cloud on July 14 introduced two new security services to its cloud platform, including a VM service launched as part of Google’s Confidential Computing portfolio. The services cater to heavily regulated and security-sensitive industries including public sector, healthcare, and financial services. Confidential VMs, a data protection technology now in beta, is the first product in the company’s Confidential Computing data encryption initiative. Attempting to take isolation and sandboxing to the “next level,” Confidential VMs provide memory encryption on AMD EPYC CPUs, leveraging the hardware’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization feature. All Google Cloud Platform workloads running in VMs today can run on Confidential VMs. Assured Workloads for Government creates controlled environments in which U.S. data location and personnel access controls are automatically enforced. The technology is intended to enable federal, state, and local agencies to serve critical workloads in the cloud without compromising on compliance. Assured Workloads for Government currently is in a private beta stage in U.S. regions. It will be made generally available with beta features this fall. Google is offering a free trial of its cloud platform. Cloud ComputingTechnology IndustrySecurity