Jane Edwards
Amazon has announced plans to introduce its second Amazon Web Services Secret Cloud Region in 2025.
In a blog post published Tuesday, the company said the new AWS Secret-West Region will be accredited to support workloads up to the U.S. Secret classification level and enable defense and national security customers and their partners to deploy multiregion architectures in support of critical missions and efforts to drive innovation in the field of artificial intelligence.
Strengthening US Leadership in AI
“The launch of the AWS Secret-West Region will strengthen U.S. AI leadership and accelerate the development of advanced capabilities and groundbreaking innovation,” said Dave Levy, vice president of worldwide public sector at AWS.
“Customers using the new AWS Secret-West Region will be able to use advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud provider and see their critical missions enhanced by the operational speed, scalability, security, and innovation that AWS provides,” added Levy, a six-time Wash100 awardee.
Supporting Critical Warfighting IT Systems
“The Army welcomes the announcement by AWS regarding the availability of a second Secret AWS cloud region, which will enhance support for critical warfighting IT systems and data,” said Leonel Garciga, the U.S. Army’s chief information officer.
“This new region offers key benefits that align with the Army’s modernization priorities and will function as a highly resilient backup site, safeguarding combat-essential applications and information from disruptions, thereby improving the lethality and readiness of our forces,” added Garciga, a two-time Wash100 Award recipient.
Extending Support for Classified Government Workloads
The AWS Secret-West Region could help the defense and national security community field multiregion architectures for mission-critical workloads in two Secret Regions. Each region consists of multiple availability zones, enabling customers to operate latency-sensitive applications and databases and develop highly resilient architectures.
In 2011, AWS launched AWS GovCloud (US-West) designed to meet U.S. government security and compliance requirements. In 2014, the company unveiled AWS Top Secret-East, its first Top Secret Region and the first air-gapped commercial cloud accredited to back classified workloads.
In 2017, AWS introduced the AWS Secret Region, which was accredited to support government workloads classified at Secret, Unclassified and Top Secret levels. In 2021, the company launched AWS Top Secret-West as its second Top Secret Region.
