Amazon introduced a new version of its web services targeting the U.S. Intelligence Community, dubbed AWS Secret Region.
Secret Region is available to customers via Amazon Web Services' contract with the intelligence community's Commercial Cloud Services, or C2S, group. It will also be accessible to U.S. government organizations that aren't part of the intelligence community if they have their own "contract vehicles" and secret-level network access.
"With the launch of this new Secret Region, AWS becomes the first and only commercial cloud provider to offer regions to serve government workloads across the full range of data classifications, including unclassified, sensitive, secret and top secret," Amazon said. "By using the cloud, the U.S. government is better able to deliver necessary information and data to mission stakeholders."
Members of the intelligence community see the announcement as a step in the right direction for their organizations.
"The AWS Secret Region is a key component of the Intel Community's multi-fabric cloud strategy. It will have the same material impact on the [Intel Community] at the secret level that C2S has had at top secret," said John Edwards, CIO of the CIA.
The announcement follows AWS' recent security update, in which the company bolstered the encryption and security features on S3, its data storage service, Nov. 6.
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