Use Cases

Cloud infrastructure

Microsoft ships IPE in production on Azure:

• Azure Linux with OS Guard — code integrity enforcement on AKS node images
• Azure Boost — locked-down host stack for offloaded hypervisor workloads

Confidential computing

In a confidential VM the hardware attests the initial state at launch. IPE can constrain what executes after boot, complementing hardware attestation with runtime enforcement.

Edge and embedded devices

Fixed-function devices that ship as whole dm-verity images. IPE ensures only code from signed images can execute.

Where IPE fits

IPE works well when the set of code that should run is known ahead of time, ships as signed artifacts, and the system already uses dm-verity or fs-verity. See the kernel documentation for more detail.