Introduction

This chapter introduces the motivation behind the development of trusted execution environments (TEEs). In particular, we briefly describe why relying solely on operating system-level security is insufficient for addressing sophisticated software threats, such as root-level attackers. We also discuss how TEEs differ from other technologies typically contained under the ‘confidential computing’ umbrella, such as homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation. Lastly, we lay out the scope for the rest of the book and its target audience.