Australia to build Top Secret cloud in AWS for military and spooky users
Interoperability with US infrastructure a big selling point
Australia's government has announced its intention to build a Top Secret-rated cloud, with help from Amazon Web Services.…
A government announcement states the cloud will be built in partnership with the Australian Signals Directorate – an agency responsible for foreign signals intelligence and cyber security.
The so-called TS Cloud will apparently be "purpose-built for Australia's Defence and National Intelligence Community agencies to securely host our country's most sensitive information." The cloud is touted as giving Australia the chance to "improve our ability to securely share and analyze our nation's most classified data at speed and at scale, and provides opportunities to harness leading technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning."
Australia's defense comms networks will apparently become more resilient as a result of the deal, improving the nation's warfighting capacity.
Another promised benefit is support for "greater interoperability and deeper collaboration with the United States." Officials have stated that the cloud will be fully sovereign – but details of what's been done to make that a reality are absent.