Well Done Amazon

[Gromit]

The Government are giving them £1Billion to host our secret services’ Cloud data. Not sure if it was a competitive tender, or whether Priti read a good review and made the order.

[ToraToraTora]

Bargain, you want to see how much we've got in their "cloud"!

[Stickybottle]

Is that the only way they can get them to pay the proper tax in this country ?

[bobbinwales]

Giving them or paying them?

[Gromit]

// GCHQ said to the Financial Times that it would not discuss its business relationships with technology suppliers. Amazon declined to comment.
Industry experts suggested that the deal could be worth between £500m and £1bn over the next ten years. //

[Zacs-Master]

Who would you give the contract to, Gromit?

[Gromit]

Zac
Next Generation data in Wales.

We should not store all our secrets on foreign soil.

[jno]

we've got sovereignty, we can hand our secrets to anyone we like. The next generation Snowdens will pass them on to the world.

[Gromit]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/26/amazon-web-services-aws-contract-data-mi5-mi6-gchq

[ToraToraTora]

It always amuses me when Clueless of Tunbridge Wells talk about IT! PMSL!

[THECORBYLOON]

TORATORATORA, what information about the deal and likely security measures can you add to the debate?

[youngmafbog]

Hmm, I am tending to agree with Gromit on parts of this.

AWS does not keep the data in the UK, it quite clearly states backups will be in the USA. Certain types of data should not be kept on foreign soil.

I worked at a UK Bank where we moved from AWS to Azure partly because of this. Another reason was that Azure was a heck of a lot cheaper plus being a platinum customer meant we good help.

//Who would you give the contract to//

Ideally the Home Office should have its own cloud. Its big enough and has a large enough budget. However with incompetence abounding and the inability to implement the simplest IT systems from the Civil Service, even when well over funded, I would opt for Azure.

[youngmafbog]

//We should not store all our secrets on foreign soil.//

A correction I'd like to make:

We should not store ANY our secrets on foreign soil.

[ToraToraTora]

yes YMB but AWS is really little more than a storage medium, it is the owners responsibility to encrypt themselves if they are worried, that's what we do at work. They may have the data, gawd knows where but they can't read it. Gromit with his usual anti British Slant is trying to spin it.

[Zacs-Master]

Reported as Spam (Gromit obviously has shares in Next Generation Data)

[Gromit]

Azure is Microsoft.
Not sure how they are any better than Amazon.

There are large Data Centres in the UK. A way of hosting our Cloud from there should be found. Or we insist bigtech keeps our data here, not in the US.

[Gromit]

// Gromit with his usual anti British Slant is trying to spin it. //

D’oh! I’m being anti American, pro Britain.

[jno]

notoriously anti-British though I am, the notion of storing British secrets in the USA leaves me scratching my head the same way getting Chinese companies to build British nuclear plants does: why are they doing this?? Surely Britain is capable of handling these vital security-related matters itself?

[youngmafbog]

//Azure is Microsoft.
Not sure how they are any better than Amazon. //

Didnt read my post then.

Azure keeps the Data in the UK on UK South and UK West (Cardiff area)

In addition Azure is miles cheaper, not just marginally but miles ahead. I've set up many servers in Azure and in AWS, I do know what I am talking about and yes clearly I know its Microsoft or I wouldn't have referred to being a platinum partner!

[youngmafbog]

AWS is a bit more than a storage medium - if you want it to be.

It's not clear how the Government intend to use it (I doubt they know themselves it probably just seems like a good idea) but you can choose anything from IaaS, PaaS to SaaS. I f you want to do it then you can run your whole system on it, you dont need any data systems of your own.

[youngmafbog]

//They may have the data, gawd knows where but they can't read it.//

Unfortunately being the USA its a little more complex than that

From AWS:
Disclosure of customer content: We will not disclose customer content unless we're required to do so to comply with the law or a binding order of a government body. If a governmental body sends AWS a demand for customer content, we will attempt to redirect the governmental body to request that data directly from the customer. If compelled to disclose customer content to a government body, we will give customers reasonable notice of the demand to allow the customer to seek a protective order or other appropriate remedy unless AWS is legally prohibited from doing so.