A CISO classifies their organization’s most sensitive assets — sovereign data, pharmaceutical IP, trade secrets — as Restricted. They evaluate AI security solutions and select a Tier 3 provider: advanced Confidential Computing with hardware-level GPU encryption.
The CISO authorized Restricted data to leave the organization under Tier 3 protection. The data required Tier 4. The breach isn’t a technology failure — it’s a classification mismatch.
STEP 1 — ASSESSMENTThe CISO evaluates the Tier 3 solution. Hardware enclaves, encrypted VRAM, attestation — it looks solid. The security team approves sending Restricted data to the third-party AI platform.
STEP 2 — DEPLOYMENTRestricted data leaves the organization. It enters the third-party infrastructure and is decrypted at the GPU cores for computation. The data exists in plaintext during every inference cycle.
STEP 3 — BREACHThe third party is compromised. An insider or a side-channel exploit extracts data from GPU memory during computation. Because Tier 3 still decrypts at the cores, the plaintext was there to steal.
Tier 4 eliminates this risk entirely. With FHEnom for AI™, the data never exists in plaintext — not in memory, not at the cores, not anywhere on the infrastructure. Even if the third party is fully compromised, the attacker gets ciphertext. There is nothing to steal.