[Little Ray]

Why, in the name of all that is Holy, is the CIA exposing its data by using ‘the Cloud?’
Everything should be internal - and using sneaker-net (hand carried) wherever possible.

[petitfour]

Because Obama’s goal was for there to be no secrets except for his secrets and for all countries to have equal information and equal stuff.

[palmer]

Not sure about the CIA, but in general Amazon provides a separate standalone cloud for their classified data. They might or might not have an internet connection, but if they have an internet connection it's through a secure transfer gateway (usually one way so they can suck in data from the unclassified side).

That's not say there are not problems. Typically the software running on the cloud is open source with many worldwide authors. Typically there is a staging cloud that is connected to the internet but behind a firewall. It requires a login to get into it. But one must consider the possibility that there can be a back door of some sort.

To get from the Amazon-provided standalone cloud to the outside is hopefully difficult. But I believe it would take one rogue Amazon insider to do it, their version of Edward Snowden.

Here's a description from Amazon: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-the-new-aws-secret-region/