back to article SHOCKER: CIA CIO CAN confirm that AWS cloud safe for big government

In an eyebrow raising presentation the chief information officer for the US's foreign spying wing, the CIA, has praised the cloud computing capabilities of Amazon Web Services and said the agency wants to expand its use of the company's tech. CIA CIO Doug Wolfe spoke at an event in Washington on Tuesday where he said he was …

COMMENTS

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  1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Well it *should* be safe enough for the CIA.

    Not so sure about the rest of us.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Obviously the CIA has no problem with the Cloud

    After all, the activity reports land on their desk.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did anyone expect a statement like "we know it's not safe but we use it anyway"?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh what I'd give for AWS (or an AWS-alike) in the public sector. No more four month Fujitsu lead times...

    1. Chris Wicks 1

      Isn't that

      GCloud?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Isn't that

        "GCloud" is a bad web store front end that eventually just leads to a link to "discuss prices with our representatives". The only accredited (IL2 or IL3 - it doesnt go higher) IaaS supplier on there is Skyscape, and they're not that great. Nowhere near the flexibility or price of AWS. In reality even after picking a service off the GCloud if it's anything substantial you've got to put it out to tender anyway.

        The major problem for my line of work is that virtual *really* means virtual. Great if you're doing fairly low impact web stuff, but new fangled analytics really demands directly attached storage, which Skyscape just won't do.

    2. streaky

      "Oh what I'd give for AWS (or an AWS-alike) in the public sector"

      Yeah or just hand everybody's data over to the NSA on a couple of unencrypted HDD's. The obvious out the way: the CIA are patently mad to not be in control of their own data.

  5. Shady

    Of course the CIA knows that AWS is safe

    Because they are holding the keys.

  6. NoneSuch Silver badge

    It's a lie we just don't believe anymore.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it's an air-gapped system

    running inter-DC fiber admittedly on the same campus as the CIA compound off RT28 across from Dulles airport, so at least it doesn't have to contend with the NSA tapping their un-encrypted inter-DC traffic like the NSA does to all of the telco junctions in Ashburn. But as to the long-haul links back to HQ...

    The weak point is of course the employees, both CIA and more to the point Amazon who actually run the infrastructure and have full access to the backend.

    Most commercial outfits don't know how to write apps to properly use AWS. There's no chance the public sector ever figures it out to any degree. Not for another 10 years.

  8. Adam Inistrator

    Buy off

    Buying them off or compensation for loss of real business basically.

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