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Feds: We Need Priority Access To Cloud Resources
New submitter BButlerNWW writes "Federal agencies must be assured priority and uninterrupted access to public cloud resources before fully embracing the technology for national security and emergency response IT functions, a recent report finds. It recommends creating a program to develop a system to ensure federal organizations receive 'first-in-line' access to cloud-based resources during emergency situations."
What about business continuity? What about friends, families and coworkers staying in touch? What about private companies that run CRITICAL infrastructure, like ISP data centers?
Fuck the feds. Just because it's government employees doesn't mean that it outstrips all other considerations, bar none. They act otherwise because if they can convince enough people, they get more money and power for themselves.
After all, the government and corporations are fuck buddies, giving them better access would be part of the deal.
How about this, the government makes a fucking cloud server, make sure it's up to the security they want, and open it up for the public to use, instead of relying on a corporation who only cares about making as much money as possible for the 1%ers.
Be seeing you...
Why do they need the cloud? How is the cloud better than your OWN well connected servers?
They can pay for first priority.
They can, and should. I can see how access is critical, especially during events that may knock out parts of the infrastructure. Paying for the access is both fair and in spirit with the economic system they are working within.
Of course, if they do so, some people will immediately point to their cost structure, compare it to the price paid by a novelty item manufacturer for hte same resources (minus any guarantees) and promptly declare that govermnent is inept, corrupt and wasting money.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Don't use the cloud for national security and emergency response functions.
Problem solved.
I work for a government agency (not going to name the name), but there has been push for the last few years to put much of our processing and data storage in the public cloud.
How stupid. This type of stuff normally comes from the upper management whom the vendors happen to entertain on golf courses and parties every now and then (just like the vendors push any product there.) But the cloud is different. Somehow the jackets from MS, Google, IBM, HP and Oracle have execs everywhere up to the upper echelons convinced that it will save money on IT budget. By tying ourselves up into the cloud, we are allowing for 1. potential leak of information through public storage and 2. potential denial of availability to the information when such storage and/or processing center(s) become unavailable due to network outage, disasters, national emergency, etc.
As is often the case, the headline is completely misleading. The federal government isn't demanding first priority to cloud resources.
They are saying that they can't move national security and emergency services into public clouds until the cloud providers can give them the guaranteed uptime that they have now with dedicated servers, so they're going to keep running those services on dedicated servers. This is worth talking about in that it's an exception to the general rule that the federal government is trying to move everything to cloud providers.
The article even notes that there are some specialized cloud providers (e.g. Terramark's Federal group) that offer a higher level SLA than the public cloud providers, specifically aimed at providing the kind of SLA required for national security and emergency services.
Please RTFA before flaming.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
They aren't. We've managed to elect the biggest group of idiots to power in world history.
And it isn't just the Republicans either... so don't go there. The only people that can get on the ballot for any race are inept empty suits.