8 ms·

Wonder how quickly this availability zone will become a target for attacks? A concentration of government data in a single location? Won't be (shouldn't be) c

by mey 15y ago

Wonder how quickly this availability zone will become a target for attacks? A concentration of government data in a single location? Won't be (shouldn't be) classified data, but HIPAA data has it's own risks.

rdl 15y ago
That's a risk, but EC2 actually provides better security in most ways than your average government datacenter does now, at least for unclass data (and is far superior to any classified system I've ever seen for usability and availability and cost). There's a substantial net benefit in doing this. There are other cloud providers focused on the government market today (Terremark, EDS, Savvis), all using mainly VMware or in some cases Hyper-V; the benefits of being able to use EC2 are that EC2 is in a lot of ways more innovative itself, and that a lot of companies using EC2 can now build a Federal version by just running an instance in a new zone, rather than negotiating for a new hosting provider and porting all their provisioning infrastructure to a new system.
- wisty 15y ago
  Also, the really secret can't be connected to the internet at all. Anything top secret will be on a server that can only be accessed by people on site. All USB drives on the network must be logged, or maybe disabled. All cables, computers, and other equipment must be visible, so people can't but the network. No mobile phones can be switched on, and cameras are strictly forbidden. All that jazz. The stuff that will be put on here will mostly be stuff that's a little confidential, but not particularly threatening. Obviously, it's still a threat if somebody got it all in one hit. But Gmail and Facebook would hold much more useful data.
  - rdl 15y ago
    (There are global TS/SCI networks, e.g. JWICS, UAV feeds of TS missions, etc., but definitely not connected to the Internet...although even the unclassified DoD networks are connected to the Internet only through special firewall/proxy things now.) I don't think any of the Amazon GovCloud stuff will be used for anything classified, at least for the next few years. It will mainly be used for Sensitive but Unclassified or For Official Use Only type data, which is the vast majority of day to day data processed. What probably will happen is FOUO/Unclass apps will be developed for GovCloud about 80% as well as on the public internet (which is a huge improvement over things now), and then the users who also have classified needs will complain about how crappy their classified apps are by comparison, then ask for a solution -- which probably will be an EC2-compatible classified cloud owned by the government and operated by a contractor (such as "Amazon Federal Systems" or an Amazon, Inc. partner). It might be dedicated per agency or command. It might just be an EC2 rack appliance in existing DoD datacenters. This is a great first step toward that.
deleted 15y ago
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electromagnetic 15y ago
Yes but consider how dependent governments have become on software like MS Office. If Amazon gets governments overly dependent on it, then they become a massive cash-cow. It's probably more than worth the risk to non-classified data from Amazon's POV.

by mey 15y ago

rdl 15y ago

That's a risk, but EC2 actually provides better security in most ways than your average government datacenter does now, at least for unclass data (and is far superior to any classified system I've ever seen for usability and availability and cost). There's a substantial net benefit in doing this. There are other cloud providers focused on the government market today (Terremark, EDS, Savvis), all using mainly VMware or in some cases Hyper-V; the benefits of being able to use EC2 are that EC2 is in a lot of ways more innovative itself, and that a lot of companies using EC2 can now build a Federal version by just running an instance in a new zone, rather than negotiating for a new hosting provider and porting all their provisioning infrastructure to a new system.

wisty 15y ago
Also, the really secret can't be connected to the internet at all. Anything top secret will be on a server that can only be accessed by people on site. All USB drives on the network must be logged, or maybe disabled. All cables, computers, and other equipment must be visible, so people can't but the network. No mobile phones can be switched on, and cameras are strictly forbidden. All that jazz. The stuff that will be put on here will mostly be stuff that's a little confidential, but not particularly threatening. Obviously, it's still a threat if somebody got it all in one hit. But Gmail and Facebook would hold much more useful data.
- rdl 15y ago
  (There are global TS/SCI networks, e.g. JWICS, UAV feeds of TS missions, etc., but definitely not connected to the Internet...although even the unclassified DoD networks are connected to the Internet only through special firewall/proxy things now.) I don't think any of the Amazon GovCloud stuff will be used for anything classified, at least for the next few years. It will mainly be used for Sensitive but Unclassified or For Official Use Only type data, which is the vast majority of day to day data processed. What probably will happen is FOUO/Unclass apps will be developed for GovCloud about 80% as well as on the public internet (which is a huge improvement over things now), and then the users who also have classified needs will complain about how crappy their classified apps are by comparison, then ask for a solution -- which probably will be an EC2-compatible classified cloud owned by the government and operated by a contractor (such as "Amazon Federal Systems" or an Amazon, Inc. partner). It might be dedicated per agency or command. It might just be an EC2 rack appliance in existing DoD datacenters. This is a great first step toward that.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

electromagnetic 15y ago

Yes but consider how dependent governments have become on software like MS Office. If Amazon gets governments overly dependent on it, then they become a massive cash-cow. It's probably more than worth the risk to non-classified data from Amazon's POV.