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Intel Collaborates with Leidos and Fortanix to Accelerate Clinical Trials

MaryT_Intel
Employee
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Securing Your AI

What’s New: Intel® SGX, a unique security technology of Intel Xeon processors, is being used by Leidos and Fortanix to help streamline and accelerate the clinical drug trial process. Leidos provides information technology services for a variety of industries including life sciences. As clinical trials have become increasingly complex, building systems that can address privacy and security concerns are paramount for driving collaboration that can accelerate therapies to market. Intel SGX and the Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager provide the foundation for creating a distributed network of trusted computing environments that allows Leidos to deliver services that facilitate the real-time sharing of critical data while meeting the stringent patient and industry compliance regulations.

Collection and analysis of protected medical data is fraught with challenges, including the sensitivity of and distributed nature of the data across multiple healthcare entities and systems, which requires strong protections for patient privacy. Technology now gives us the tools to securely share private information between parties and create a collaborative real-time clinical information system. By addressing security concerns at the hardware level, Intel SGX creates a trusted computing environment that helps ensure data integrity and privacy. This means information is shared and validated more quickly and securely – and needed therapies can more quickly be presented to those in need.
 

- Chris Gough, General Manager of Health and Life Sciences at Intel

 

Why It Matters: The ability to quickly and cost-effectively get new drugs to market and help ensure safety once there is one of the greatest challenges faced by the healthcare ecosystem today. Real-World Data (RWD) – including electronic health records – has the potential to increase the efficiency of the traditional drug development process and improve future clinical trial design. And increasing the body of knowledge around how to use RWD in clinical research can speed the adoption of these methods.

However, gathering RWD from hospitals, clinics, and medical groups must be accomplished while preserving patient privacy and complying with HIPAA and other regulations. All queries, data, applications and results must be encrypted at rest, in motion, and in use. This historically has been a huge technological challenge. However, Intel SGX enclaves, orchestrated using Fortanix Confidential Computing Manager, now enable Leidos to create a distributed trusted computing environment that meets all these requirements.

“Our team at Leidos understands the technological challenges associated with clinical information systems and the need to create trusted computing environments to securely share information,” said Erika Killian, FDA Portfolio Director at Leidos. “Intel SGX gives us the hardware foundation needed to build an ecosystem of partners that can confidently share data privately and securely, while still meeting the stringent compliance regulations in the space. Given the size and scope of these sorts of trials, we’re also excited by the upcoming scalability and performance enhancements that will enable us to run larger amounts of data through SGX enclaves.”

How It Works: At its core, Intel SGX is a set of instructions that increases the security of application code and data, giving them more protection from disclosure or modification. Developers can partition sensitive information into enclaves (or Trusted Execution Environments or TEEs), which are areas in memory on the processor that protect the data while in-use and only allow access by authorized code. These enclaves are isolated from the rest of the environment and transmitted information is encrypted and can only be decoded once inside the enclave (improving integrity of the application and data). Finally, all applications running in these protected areas are verified and signed by all data suppliers, which help protect against malicious functions hidden in application code.

Leidos utilizes Intel SGX to create a centralized research portal where enclaves capture, encrypt and analyze data. Secure enclaves at RWD endpoints receive queries, verify policy approvals, gather data and return requests to the centralized portal. Using the Fortanix Self-Defending Key Management Service as a centralized key management system, with cryptographic keys also being protected within Intel SGX enclaves, requested clinical data is tokenized and remains encrypted at rest, in transit, and in use. 
 

About Intel

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.

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About the Author
Mary is the Community Manager for this site. She likes to bike, and do college and career coaching for high school students in her spare time.