"Amazon Web Services has been granted provisional authorization to host Level 5 data for the US Department of Defense (DoD).

With the approval, the tech giant's cloud computing arm - which is one of the company's most profitable divisions - will be able to host the most sensitive data pertaining to the Pentagon, military, NSA, and other security agencies.

Amazon will be the third company to receive this authorization, following Microsoft and IBM…"

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetec...-sensitive-data.html

Not sure that makes me comfortable.

RMD

It's not uncommon for large companies to rent out unused server space to the government to house government data of various levels of sensitivity. They rent space to other companies too.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
It's not uncommon for large companies to rent out unused server space to the government to house government data of various levels of sensitivity. They rent space to other companies too.

Maybe so, but Amazon is only the third company to receive this particular authorization.

I don't believe that statement is accurate. We secure several data storage facilities that require our officers to obtain OPM security clearances. I don't think private entities can require that.

I had to look it up, but Level 5 is still unclassified. This isn't Amazon offering their extra storage space for rent, it's actually a division offering storage as a service on dedicated data centers. What I find interesting is that some of Amazon's data centers are in China. I suspect those are not certified. We had several vendors approach my old command offering said service but none were certified to store secret material. I suspect things like cleared personnel were part of the level 5 certification. I'm still not a fan of outsourcing data storage, but MILCLOUD and Army data centers are very expensive and large portions of our network are already run by contractors.