Amazon launches new ‘secret’ cloud service for intelligence agencies

The cloud computing company Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Monday that it’s launching a new service capable of hosting government data classified as “secret.”

AWS’s new “Secret Region” is part of its $600 million cloud services contract with the U.S. intelligence community (IC).

“AWS now provides the U.S. Intelligence Community a commercial cloud capability across all classification levels: Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret,” Teresa Carlson, AWS vice president of public sector services, said in a statement.

{mosads}“The U.S. Intelligence Community can now execute their missions with a common set of tools, a constant flow of the latest technology and the flexibility to rapidly scale with the mission.”

AWS has been hosting “top secret” data for the past three years for all of the government’s intelligence agencies as part of its commercial cloud services contract.

“The AWS Secret Region is a key component of the Intel Community’s multi-fabric cloud strategy,” John Edwards, the CIA’s chief information officer, said in a statement. “It will have the same material impact on the IC at the Secret level that [commercial cloud services] has had at Top Secret.”