nextgov | One of the CIA’s top security officials said the cloud infrastructure built by Amazon Web Services is improving the spy agency’s cybersecurity posture and speed to mission handling national security threats.
“Cloud has been a godsend for folks trying to implement systems quickly and for us to secure workloads better,” said CIA Chief Information Security Officer Sherrill Nicely, speaking Thursday at an event hosted by Nextgov.
“We’re very happy with it,” Nicely added. “Our agency and other [intelligence community] components are busily working to move their workloads into the cloud, and off legacy and into the new.”
ICH | News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.
The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon -- which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.
Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.
And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.
Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
