Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Monday April 13 2015, @07:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the trusted-cloud-module dept.

Snowden's stream of leaked NSA secrets about classified surveillance programs shined the public spotlight on the clandestine government organization. Though the stream has now dissipated to a trickle, the impact to the intelligence community continues.

[...] Within NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters, no one wants to face another Snowden. With NSA's widespread adoption of cloud computing, the spy agency may not have to.

NSA bet big on cloud computing as the solution to its data problem several years ago. [...] NSA's GovCloud - open-source software stacked on commodity hardware - creates a scalable environment for all NSA data. Soon, most everything NSA collects will end up in this ocean of information.

At first blush, that approach seems counterintuitive. In a post-Snowden world, is it really a good idea to put everything in one place -- to have analysts swimming around in an ocean of NSA secrets and data? It is, if that ocean actually controls what information analysts in the NSA GovCloud can access. That's analogous to how NSA handles security in its cloud.

NSA built the architecture of its cloud environment from scratch, allowing security to be baked in and automated rather than bolted on and carried out by manual processes. Any piece of data ingested by NSA systems over the last two years has been meta-tagged with bits of information, including where it came from and who is authorized to see it in preparation for the agency's cloud transition.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @08:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @08:54PM (#169985)

    "is it really a good idea to put everything in one place"

    "The cloud" isn't one place. "The cloud" is a bullshit marketing term for a variety of distributed computing, content management and storage architectures. This is similar to "broadband modem" or "cable modem" (both contradictions in terms). Conversationally, "the cloud", is the same as saying "it's magic". It is what you tell children and and stupid people when you don't feel like explaining things.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2