Posted on 12/11/2015 5:21:08 PM PST by markomalley
Defense and intelligence officials are discussing when and how to allow commercial cloud providers to handle Level 6 classified data, said Rob Vietmeyer, an associate director for cloud computing in the office of the Department of Defense CIO. It could be over a year before such an arrangement materializes, Vietmeyer told reporters Dec. 11, but the development shows a willingness to trust the private sector with military secrets.
Defense officials are banking on cloud computing to save the department billions of dollars as part of an ambitious plan to consolidate its vast amount of data centers. Allowing contractors to handle Level 6 data, the highest designation of data sensitivity, is a work in progress that will require numerous security concerns to be met.
There are also logistical challenges of bringing a commercial cloud provider onto a DOD facility, including the bandwidth that the department will need to provide the contractor, Vietmeyer noted.
"There are a bunch of processes that we're looking through now about how we operationalize that," Vietmeyer said after an appearance at a conference hosted by AFCEA's Northern Virginia chapter.
A Defense Information Systems Agency official said in November that DISA would grant four to five provisional authorizations for commercial cloud providers to handle Level 5 data over the course of 18 months. Level 5 includes high-sensitivity data on national security systems and runs through cloud access points to the unclassified NIPRNet.
One of those provisional authorizations will be for IBM to offer cloud services at the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory, a Navy-owned facility in Rocket Center, W.Va., Vietmeyer said.
"We are looking at how do we extend that model to other providers and other data centers, working primarily right now with both the Army and DISA to open up some of the Army data centers, some of the DISA data centers, to bring commercial providers into that environment," he added.
Vietmeyer said during his presentation that the closing of data centers has not yielded as much savings as officials expected. Fork-lifting servers from one environment to another hasn't translated into "the big numbers that we were really hoping for," he said.
"There is a lot of work in shutting down a data center," including migrating, optimizing and managing applications, he added.
Yep, nothing to worry about.
Satire or Hillary?
facing Mecca
.
Now, the why....
Because you have surrendered to the Saudi oil gods....
Apparently China has had a little trouble stealing our data. I guess it’s time to make their job a little easier.
Just hand it over to the Chinese, Rissians and Norks and save a bunch of money.
It’s like ‘someone’ is intentionally giving away all our secrets.
Everything is moving to cloud architectures. But surely they mean an internal closed cloud on government premises. God I hope so.
No doubt the US government outsourcing will be spectacularly successful, because when it comes to efficiency the feds are in a class by themselves.
Most brilliant idea they have had in 239 years.
My gosh. I sometimes wish I was 80....no lie. When I think back to 1987 and today. I don’t even recognize the United States of America. I am hardly talking about this cloud thing which is stupid, but just everything. I can’t believe it. Stunning and not even 30 years yet. I can’t even imagine what the next 30 will bring.
Just trying to keep up with OPM which backed up all of the security clearance files to Chinese servers.
It’s gotta be their own in-house cloud. But still it’s internet based, and anything internet can and will be hacked.
The only upside is that the Classified info is so wrong (Military Strategy, Ship Design, bo’s policies, etc.) that the spies will get misled.
the feds should consult with queen cankles..she’s an expert on classified docs.
This must be coming from the same people who thought Chinese IT people in China working on the Office of Personnel Management database (where all federal contractor data, all military personnel files, all records of those with security clearances) was fine ... until they discovered the security flaw when a third party did its security tool demo and found it, and an internet highway copying all existing and new OPM data was copied to China.
Gee, are you folks just know leaning about this. The DoD has been on orders to closed down its organizational and post server farms and ‘go to the cloud’ for the last 3-4 years.
My organization has been told that we’ll need to move all of our stuff to the cloud. the “cute” think is that the DoD has yet to figure out guidelines, whether it will be a commercial provider (Amazon for example), DISA (which is monstrously expensive) or ??????
And they have said the same for all Army websites that folks go to for unclassified information such as http://www.us.army.mil and http://www.history.army.mil/
And the CMH site is, according to reports, the most visited website the Army has with several million hits every month.
DISA makes the most sense, but that’s getting major pushback from the billpayers and the intel community. I can’t wait to see what happens!
Obama administration. Just another way to weaken America.
the “official reason” is to reduce cost of each installation having its own, individual server farm.
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