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Amazon Hints At Details On Its CIA Franken-Cloud
coondoggie writes "Amazon Web Services recently won a reported $600 million contract to build the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) a cloud. But that cloud will not look like any other cloud on the planet. Amazon will build the cloud using AWS architectures and AWS will manage it, but executives hinted that it will not be accessed the way other customers use AWS services through the public Internet. 'We're managing the operations in the data center,' Andy Jassy, Amazon's senior vice president and the head of the company's cloud computing division AWS said about the CIA deal. 'It's our hardware, it's our networking.'"
It's not really "ze cloud" then, right? Fuck, I'm tired of hearing that word.
'It's our hardware, it's our networking.'"
Until they tell us it's not.
Just another day in Paradise
If any concern should know better than falling for the cloud BS, especially one that's managed by another, private concern, it's the CIA. Jesus, even I, Mister Nobody, don't put anything in any cloud that matters, and keep my own valuable (to me) data on my own servers...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
With a very fast direct one way link from the public cloud?
frankincense?
AWS is building the CIA a massive private cloud that will run AWS infrastructure, but it will sit in a CIA data center.
there, that's the entire article in one sentence.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's a private cloud solution. Like the dozens of private clouds set up by RedHat (among others) in the Federal space.
Best Slashdot Co
but executives hinted that it will not be accessed the way other customers use AWS services through the public Internet.
That leaves only one possible option.
in the 90's the military had their own IP web based cloud. accessed it via internet explorer like any other website except it was physically separate from the non-secure internet WWW that everyone wasted time on
It's days like this that I just love the Chrome extension that changes all instances of the word "cloud" to "butt."
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
I received an unsolicited email from Amazon letting me know about the exciting opportunity for a systems engineer position for this project (I'm only presuming, I don't know for sure). Not exactly my cup of tea, but the SSBI requirement along with '+1 years' in all of the technical requirements scared me off. (i.e. they're throwing out a really wide net for "talent"). Also, shift work? No thanks!
The really interesting part of this to me is that the requirements for clearance imply that first tier engineers will be potentially exposed to sensitive data. Has Amazon learned nothing from the Snowden exposures? If not, here's a summary:
* Encrypt your data
* Compartmentalize access
* First tier pizza box coroners shouldn't have access to sensitive data. They don't need it, they shouldn't have it. If they do, its because your system isn't design to be secure. Simply creating a 'new' separate cloud only compartmentalizes the risk.
I'll even go as far to make a joking assert that it'd probably be more secure in the existing AWS cloud since attackers would have to sift through petabytes of crap before they found anything interesting.
There should be technology in place to ensure that a non-cleared engineer (or even a bad actor http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/ could be hired for this role.
My name is XXXXXXXXXX, and I am a recruiting coordinator with Amazon Web Services. We recently reviewed your profile and our hiring team is interested in speaking with you about a new project that we are working on. We are looking for candidates who are interested in obtaining and maintaining a US Government Security Clearance and we feel that your background and skills are a good fit for the role and would like to schedule a phone interview with you. Please be aware that because AWS runs in a 24x7 environment, all System Engineer and Support Engineer candidates will need to be open to shift work if hired.
I have included a high level job description below to give you a general idea about the roles we have in AWS. For more specific information about Amazon Web Services and our teams, please visit: http://aws.amazon.com/. Please note, we have other positions available, so if this role doesnâ(TM)t pique your interest, please let us know what you are interested in and we can find a more suitable opportunity.
These roles would require you to relocate to the Seattle, WA or Herndon, VA area. Please let us know what your location preference is so that we may find an appropriate team. We will provide relocation assistance and more information will be available further into the process.
If you are interested in learning more and talking with a member of the team, please send me your availability for a phone interview (between 10:00am-4:00pm PST) for the next two weeks, as well as the best phone number to use for this conversation. Please keep in mind that phone interviews can take up to 75 minutes to complete. We are looking to fill this position as soon as possible, so please let me know if you have any questions or concerns that I can address.
Thank you for your time and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Amazon Web Services is a dynamic and rapidly growing business within Amazon.com. We are building some of the largest and most complex distributed systems in the world, and we need world class people to help us implement and operate them.
We provide organizations with building block web services that allow them to innovate faster and operate their software more cost-effectively. These services-in-the-cloud include on-demand compute capacity, storage, content delivery, querying of structured data, message queuing, and more.
We have high standards for our computer systems as well as our employees: our systems are highly secure, highly reliable, highly available, and must function at massive scale; our employees are super smart, driven to serve customers, and
Reminds me of Singer and IBM 75 from years ago..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Item 1: Amazon inks $600M cloud services deal with CIA.
Item 2: CIA collecting bulk data from financial transactions
Item 3: BTC breaks $400 USD
Is the CIA running a mining pool and data-mining the block chain? That would be logical. Not to mention efficient.
Too logical for the Treasury Department, of course, but there may be some hope for Commerce.
The Pirate Bay :-)
I bet it's distributed to every single VM server and network device that they have. You know, just a little agent to capture all data from all customers at the source.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Leave it to the leader of the "Me" generation to get his name branded onto anything he can.
"My question is, if they do look at your computer, do you have anything they'd care about?"
Why yes, I do.
Pron, plenty of pron for them to jerk-off to.
join 'em.
You seem to be making some incorrect assumptions. There was a bidding process. Amazon's bid was selected over IBM's. IBM did protest. They lost.