Some thoughts about cloud computing and ITAR

We have recently explored a bit an area of cloud computing and ITAR regulations. To acquaint you better with this topic the short explanation of what exactly ITAR is, should be given.

ITAR, an abbreviation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations, is a set of directives with the purpose of controlling the importation and exportation of defense related articles and services, that are listed on United States Munition List (USML). According to the information given by the government of United States all exporters, manufacturers and brokers of all defense services and articles as well as defense-related technical data must be compliant to ITAR.

But what ITAR has to do with cloud computing? Companies decide to move to cloud for three major reasons. First of all it pays off well, because there is no need to maintain and power data centres. Easy recovery and backup as well as fast deployment are also of great importance. Last but not least is scalability, thanks to which you can get additional resources whenever you need them.

We should ask ourselves whether it is possible to companies from the United States that are processing

ITAR data to use the above listed benefits of cloud computing? The answer is positive, but not without help of the particular tool, named AWS GovCloud.

AWS GovCloud is an isolated AWS region designed to allow US customers moving sensitive workloads into the cloud. It is physically isolated from all other regions. What is more the accounts to AWS GovCloud are granted only to persons from the United States working for US organisations. And curiously AWS does not have any visibility into what customers are uploading into AWS network, because all data are treated as ITAR data.

We are here to help you moving your sensitive resources to the cloud. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us at any time.