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Amazon Launches a Cloud Service For US Intelligence Agencies (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the not-so-secret-anymore dept.

Amazon Web Services on Monday introduced cloud service for the CIA and other members of the U.S. intelligence community. From a report: The launch of the so-called AWS Secret Region comes six years after AWS introduced GovCloud, its first data center region for public sector customers. AWS has since announced plans to expand GovCloud. The new Secret Region signals interest in using AWS from specific parts of the U.S. government. In 2013 news outlets reported on a $600 million contract between AWS and the CIA. That event singlehandledly helped Amazon in its effort to sign up large companies to use its cloud, whose core services have been available since 2006.

4 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Worst idea EVER by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not just post all our Top Secret documents on Twitter where all enemies of the U.S. can find them easily? Would be cheaper and about as secure as any gods-be-damned 'cloud service'! Since when do U.S. Intelligence agencies, or ANY government agency for that matter, not hosting their own data!?

    1. Re:Worst idea EVER by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2

      Technically it's on on-site hosting. The data is not stored in Amazon's cloud. The CIA is using Amazon's servers on-site.

    2. Re:Worst idea EVER by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2

      You mean Barack Obama, his administration approved the deal.

    3. Re:Worst idea EVER by EndlessNameless · · Score: 3, Informative

      People have started using terms like "own cloud" or "on-site cloud" to describe infrastructure services that are provisioned internally. Yes, this is stupid and pointless. Yet here we are.

      Your typical internal cloud will have hardware, hypervisor, and management stack all provided and supported by a single vendor. Sometimes they will certify hardware and provide support for whatever you build.

      They basically took the old mainframe business model, broke it out onto gobs of x86 servers, and repackaged it as something new. Now you run your applications on a VM or in a Docker container instead of an LPAR.

      So, yes, local cloud is pure marketing bullshit. But it does refer to something different (and more secure) than regular cloud services.

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      According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.