Amazon will provide a high-security cloud environment to store top-secret British information from UK’s intelligence services. This secure cloud system will also be utilized by other secret agencies such as MI5 and MI6. Even though the AWS company is operating from America and an American company, the data in question will be located in the UK and the company won’t have access to any of the data.
High-security cloud systems to store valuable information
AWS and UK intelligence agencies’ agreement on storing national-security information on high-security cloud systems is the latest deal between an American technology company and an intelligence service company to become public. The single-vendor cloud contract is estimated to be worth up to $1.4B over the next decade.
Some of the recent developments in security service deals with cloud services could be enlisted as;
- A 15-year contract for secret Commercial Cloud Enterprise has been signed with the CIA and five of the largest cloud service providers; Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, and Google in late 2020.
- $2 Billion Greenlake contract have been signed between National Security Agency and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in September. According to the contract, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is to provide the intelligence agency with high-performance cloud computing technology.
- $10 Billion WildandStormy contract has been signed between National Security Agency and Amazon Web Services. This contract has been disputed by Microsoft. They filed a bid protest on July 21st after they got the news from NSA that the contract has been given to AWS.
It is encouraging to see big national security names do contracts with cloud service providers. It shows that national security agencies trust the reliability and security of cloud services that are provided by big names, such as Amazon, Google, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft.