Amazon Web Services recently unveiled their AWS Secret Region cloud, available to the U.S. intelligence community through their Commercial Cloud Services contract with AWS.

According to a blog post on the announcement, this makes AWS the only commercial cloud provider to provide for all classifications of data between unclassified and top secret.

“Today, we mark an important milestone as we launch the AWS Secret Region,” said Teresa Carlson, vice president of Amazon Web Services Worldwide Public Sector. “AWS now provides the U.S. intelligence community a commercial cloud capability across all classification levels: top secret, secret, sensitive and unclassified. 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. The AWS Top Secret Region was launched three years ago as the first air-gapped commercial cloud and customers across the U.S. intelligence community have made it a resounding success. Ultimately, this capability allows more agency collaboration, helps get critical information to decision makers faster, and enables an increase in our nation’s security.”

The region will also be available to non-intelligence government agencies who have secret-level network access and their own contract vehicles with the AWS Secret Region.

According to the AWS blog post, the AWS Secret Region will be assessed and accredited for security compliance under the Director of National Intelligence’s Intelligence Community Directive 503 and National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-53 Revision 4.

“The AWS Secret Region is a key component of the intel community’s multi-fabric cloud strategy,” said John Edwards, CIA CIO. “It will have the same material impact on the IC at the secret level that C2S has had at top secret.”

Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.

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