Locked in our technology siloes, the word “cloud” has become common vernacular. Working in IT, we know what it means, and we know at this point the kind of potential cloud computing unlocks. It’s not a big step to say that it will underpin technological innovation for the foreseeable future. […]

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) move to the cloud is fueled by the agency’s desire to improve interoperability and adopt emerging technologies, according to officials speaking during yesterday’s MeriTalk webinar. On the webinar, which was underwritten by AWS and Red Hat, Stephen Moon, senior solutions architect, DoD at Amazon Web Services, and Ted Brunell, chief architect, DoD at Red Hat discussed why cloud is mission-critical and how DoD sees it shaping the future. […]

During an Aug. 8 webinar on VMware Cloud on AWS hosted by the Digital Government Institute, participants said that VMware and AWS are setting up a dedicated instance of the service called VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US). This instance is intended to meet standards set by FedRAMP, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR). […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is working to ensure robust cybersecurity across multiple cloud providers, said an agency cybersecurity leader at FCW’s Cybersecurity Summit on Thursday. […]

Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility between cloud service providers (CSPs) and government organizations. CSPs provide agencies with a secure platform to operate on, but it is the responsibility of agency security leaders to ensure the applications that are being hosted have been hardened, according to security experts. […]

Federal IT pros clearly have their heads in the clouds–as government efforts increasingly focus on leveraging cloud computing to help support mission-critical workloads, securely and cost-effectively. […]

An overwhelming majority–86 percent–of 150 Defense Department (DoD) IT managers surveyed by MeriTalk said that failing to modernize legacy DoD systems is putting U.S. national security in jeopardy, and a similar number (83 percent) are concerned about the potential of the U.S. falling behind adversaries like China and Russia in newer-technology arenas including cyberspace, artificial intelligence, and electronic warfare. […]

Is moving to the cloud too risky for government agencies’ sensitive data? Is the cloud too expensive? Will migrating hinder government performance? There’s a lot of misleading and confusing information out there when it comes to commercial cloud adoption in government, so MeriTalk and Amazon Web Services decided to clear the cloud clutter and demystify government cloud adoption once and for all with their latest research – “Fact or Fiction? Debunking Government Cloud Myths.” […]

Government agencies may finally be getting a handle on cloud, according to a major cloud service provider, as the breadth of Federal use cases in the cloud expands rapidly. […]

It’s no secret–Federal agencies are on the move to the cloud. We’ve seen the legislation and read the reports; the move to commercial cloud continues to march on. It’s a streamlined solution that offers cost savings, flexibility, innovation, and security. […]

CSRA announced Aug. 23 that it will test the Navy’s enterprise level integrated pay and personnel system operating on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. CSRA will test the viability and flexibility of the human resource management (HRM) system. […]

Cloud computing services can keep pace with the fast-moving nature of private sector workplaces, according to Conrad Unciano, systems engineering manager for CSRA. He said CSRA recently migrated four of its key applications using Amazon cloud services. […]

Cloud infrastructure may be the safest place to store an agency’s most sensitive data, department of Justice officials said at an AWS Public Sector Summit. “I’d say it’s a pretty good place to put your crown jewels,” said Karl Mathias, chief information officer for the United States Marshals Service, adding that commercial clouds may end up being safer than an agency’s own data centers. […]

Amazon Web Services will open a new GovCloud Region in 2018 on the U.S. East Coast, the company announced at its annual Public Sector Summit on June 13. […]

Agencies whose websites ranked low in the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s study of government websites can improve by moving to the cloud, industry experts say. […]

Amazon announced that it has selected 12 university teams to compete in the Alexa Prize competition. […]

Federal agencies can now use cloud computing systems to store their most sensitive, unclassified data, through the recent release of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program High Baseline.
“This release allows agencies to use cloud environments for high-impact data, including data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin,” said the FedRAMP announcement. […]