A security guarantee in only meangful if people can act on it. Attestation results must be understood by the engineers who configure them and the officials who approve data use. And they must fit a legal world that was designed around a simpler assumption: that whoever runs a computer can see what it does.
This theme looks at confidential computing from the outside. Two topics study the people who use attestation; two examine how law and regulation should treat workloads that are deliberately opaque. Norway offers unusually concrete cases. The national health analysis platform was cancelled in 2023 after costing about NOK 200 million, with the directorate citing difficulty finding solutions after the Schrems II ruling (Digi.no).
Topic 1: Can platform engineers configure attestation correctly?
The question. What do engineers believe an attestation result proves, and how do those beliefs shape the policies they write? A strong mechanism configured on a wrong assumption gives false confidence.
What you'll do.
- Run task-based studies covering secret release, software updates and failed verification.
- Design and evaluate improved policy explanations or tooling.
Topic 2: Making attestation legible to the people who approve data use
The question. Confidential computing's guarantee arrives as an attestation report almost no decision-maker can read. Can it be translated into evidence that data protection officers, ethics committees and health-data case handlers can use, without creating false confidence?
What you'll do.
- Interview decision-makers about the evidence they rely on today.
- Design plain-language attestation summaries.
- Test comprehension and trust in a scenario-based experiment that includes a deliberately misconfigured case.
Topic 3: Can a TEE carry a Schrems II assessment?
The question. The Schrems II ruling restricts transfers of personal data to countries with weaker legal protections, including the US. Does attested confidential computing on a US-owned cloud count as an effective "supplementary measure" under that ruling? The complication: the attestation service, microcode and firmware updates are all controlled by US vendors.
What you'll do.
- Map each path by which a provider could be compelled to give access: hypervisor, firmware update, attestation service, side channels.
- Assess each path against the legal standard, with a co-supervisor from the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law at UiO.