Microsoft has secured a potentially lucrative agreement that makes the full suite of the tech giant's cloud-computing platform available to 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, executives said recently, moving agencies' computer systems onto Office 365 applications and adding certain cloud-based applications not previously available to them.
The agreement could strengthen Microsoft's prospects for winning government business at a time when it is locked in competition with some of the world's biggest tech companies for a Pentagon cloud-computing contract that is expected to be worth billions.
For years, Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that provides cloud computing for businesses and government agencies, has been the primary provider of cloud services to U.S. intelligence agencies, thanks to a $600 million contract with the CIA. (Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
That remains the case after the recent agreement. Still, executives from Microsoft framed the contract agreement as an "awakening."
"This is a huge win from a Microsoft perspective," said Dana Barnes, vice president of the company's joint and defense agencies business unit. "It's kind of an awakening as far as the intelligence community is concerned that you can't be a one-cloud community."
http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2018/05/microsoft_makes_inroads_with_u.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @03:58PM
the amount paid to Stefan Halper?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @04:05PM (2 children)
> For years, Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that provides cloud computing for businesses and government agencies, has been the primary provider of cloud services to U.S. intelligence agencies, thanks to a $600 million contract with the CIA. (Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
Note that the Amazon contract to provide cloud services to the intelligence agencies predated Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post. The AWS deal was signed in early 2013 and Bezos announced his purchase of the newspaper in August 2013.
The original article was not clear on this point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @04:15PM (1 child)
can you elaborate for us why this is important to know and then clarify?
the article doesn't seem to have gained anything by adding the extra info.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday May 21 2018, @05:30PM
Cloud is a very special kind of internet. The #AmazonWashingtonPost [twitter.com], sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!! How do I feel about internet tax? I try to avoid paying it whenever possible. But the idea is an idea that a lot of people like very much.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 21 2018, @04:23PM (2 children)
So this means MS is a double agent for some nation-state hostile to the US, no? Because the last place I'd put MS software is on secure government machines. Who are they *really* helping here?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday May 21 2018, @11:06PM
As a multinational, Microsoft cut out any 3rd party nation and are fine being hostile to the US all on their own. Yay globalized free market.
Oh that's OK they're not on the secure machines. They're on the cloud... It's a safe place... In the sky... Made from satellites... And tubes...
Then again, all government work ends up as Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents stored on a local active directory CIFS server and passed on between offices using the internal Exchange servers and serviced by personal certified by Microsoft. So, just letting Microsoft take over is probably just as fucked up and expensive, but more secure since there's less room for human error when Microsoft employees can operate and monitor fewer servers directly. Well, assuming you don't mind putting all your eggs in one basket... But we're long past that.
*Those secret air-gaped machines end-up compiling spreadsheets and reports that are copied over usb drives and passed on to the brass to read on their government issued laptops that they take home to let their kids play over on the weekends.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday May 21 2018, @11:18PM
To think this is praised by the 'intelligence community'.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by AssCork on Monday May 21 2018, @04:27PM (1 child)
All one has to do is look harder at the CEO of Microsoft and the answer to "Who are they helping?" becomes clear -- "Not U.S."
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday May 22 2018, @12:10AM
Citation?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @04:56PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by https on Monday May 21 2018, @05:15PM (2 children)
MS bought skype and handed over access. I'd call that a pass.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday May 22 2018, @12:15AM (1 child)
I was going to comment that this looks like a case of scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Microsoft incorporated spyware into the most popular OS in the world and is likely feeding that info onto the 3-letter agencies. Here's their payday.
Use Linux, don't use cloud services without encrypting your data first. If you can: gmail will reject attaching encrypted attachments. So I pay for an online privacy oriented email provider.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday May 22 2018, @03:12AM
Gmail does not reject encrypting attachments. I use GMail and use full encryption as well (PGP/EnigMail, etc). But yeah, encrypt first. If you don't control the keys, assume the NSA does.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 21 2018, @06:49PM (1 child)
Do they spy agencies merely want to buy cloud computing power? Or do they specifically want cloud computing on Microsoft's platform. If Microsoft were to say they would segregate the spy agencies workloads onto separate hardware, would the spy agencies suddenly
loseloose interest? If so, then is there some new subtle unknown hardware attack against other workloads merely running on the same hardware?Who knows what new spectre or meltdown like attack might exist. Or what kind of secret sauce is baked into Intel hardware beyond what we already know about "Intel Management Engine".
Maybe Intel has magical undocumented instructions that give access to things low privileged code isn't supposed to have.
We can totally trust Intel, given their management engine. We can totally trust Microsoft given their history, and NSAKEY. But don't trust Google because they are getting rid of "don't be evil".
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 22 2018, @02:09PM
Hmmmm . . . newer SN article . . .
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/22/0230240 [soylentnews.org]
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @08:53AM
This is approaching the same degree of stupidity as aircraft carries... "We have 11. The rest of the world combines has 6".
(Note: Results depend on which definition of aircraft carrier you use).