Amazon announces second Secret Cloud Region created to work with sensitive data

Amazon on Tuesday said it will launch its second Secret Cloud Region this year, providing critical infrastructure to government employees looking to reliably work with classified information. 

Amazon’s Secret Cloud Regions are secure, specialized data centers within the company’s cloud service, designed to host highly sensitive data or applications. Amazon launched its first Secret Cloud Region in 2017. 

In the announcement, the company said that adding a second Secret Cloud Region will give defense and government employees access to multiregion architectures, providing higher levels of resiliency and enabling artificial intelligence innovation.

“The launch of the AWS Secret-West Region will strengthen U.S. AI leadership and accelerate the development of advanced capabilities and groundbreaking innovation,” Dave Levy, vice president of Amazon Web Services’ Worldwide Public Sector, said in a statement. “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.”

Amazon noted that its two Secret Cloud Regions are made up of several Availability Zones. The zones let customers store data and applications close to users for projects with “latency-sensitive workloads.”

Customers using the Secret Cloud Region also have access to “synchronous data replication” that would let them access their work in several Availability Zones across the same region. 

Amazon’s Secret Cloud Regions can provide support for workloads across the entire spectrum of U.S. government data classifications, from unclassified to top secret. Amazon said the system’s “security-first” approach will be essential in helping national security workers build solutions. 

“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,” Leo Garciga, chief information officer of the U.S. Army, said in a statement. “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.”

Amazon launched its GovCloud program in 2011 and announced its first Top Secret Cloud Region in 2014. That region expanded to support all government data types in 2017, becoming the first cloud service provider to do so.