Google launches a government cloud
Assured Workloads for Government is a secure cloud platform the company says will give agencies more feature options and better security than traditional government clouds.
Google announced a private beta release of Assured Workloads for Government, a secure cloud platform the company says will give agencies more feature options and better security than traditional government clouds.
Assured Workloads for Government simplifies cloud compliance configuration, provides access to Google’s full suite of services and offers compatibility between government and commercial cloud environments. Other government clouds, such as the Amazon Web Services GovCloud and Microsoft Azure Government that require agencies run on “less feature-rich, fortressed versions of commercial clouds to meet their needs,” Google officials said in their announcement. Working with these other government clouds often means users must “operate two distinct application and operation supply chains, adding cost, complexity, and risk,” Google Cloud Managers Christopher Johnson and Bhavna Batra wrote in their blog.
The platform allow customers to easily create controlled environments, specifying and enforcing the location of data and control personnel access based on attributes such as citizenship, a particular geographical area and background checks. To limit misconfigurations, the platform offers built-in security controls and key management options.
Jeanette Manfra, now global director of security and compliance at Google Cloud and formerly the assistant director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told ZDnet the aim was to develop a "commercial cloud that works for the public sector as well as private."
Assured Workloads for Government will help government agencies, suppliers and contractors comply with cloud security requirements from Department of Defense, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program while still having access to all the latest Google Cloud features, the company said.
According to Silicon Angle, Assured Workloads for Government has been validated by Deloitte, which said the platform “will reduce the friction of compliance for its regulated government customers, while giving them Google Cloud’s newest technologies.”
General availability is expected in the fall.