What is this emerging approach called?

Confidential computing protects data while it is actively being processed in a computer's memory, closing the gap left by older methods that only secured data sitting in storage or moving across a network. It does this using a hardware-based 'trusted execution environment,' a sealed-off zone within a processor where computations happen invisibly even to the cloud provider, operating system, or anyone else with access to the machine.

Edge caching simply stores frequently used content closer to users to speed up delivery, a performance trick unrelated to protecting sensitive data during processing. Load balancing distributes network traffic across multiple servers for reliability, another performance function with no connection to encrypting active computations.

Confidential computing has opened new possibilities like rival banks or hospitals jointly analyzing shared data for fraud detection or medical research without ever exposing each other's raw, private records.