As an advanced technology partner of Amazon Web Services Inc., Telos Corp. is in the business of making sure that workloads in the cloud are secure and compliant. While there were initial concerns regarding cloud security, workloads today that reside in the cloud are now regarded as less likely to be at risk than workloads on-premises.

Telos is one of those companies that helps keep AWS client information safe from security breaches and data loss, according to John Wood (pictured), cybersecurity expert and chief executive officer of Telos. Wood spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Summit event in Bahrain. They discussed how the government of Bahrain is supporting economic development, as well as some ideas that could help improve cybersecurity in Bahrain. (* Disclosure below.)

Furrier: Can you explain what will happen with Amazon, because you’ve been a partner of AWS, you’ve been very successful, you’ve seen the moving parts, you’ve seen the impact of innovation.

Wood: The shot heard around the world back at the end of 2013 … was when the Central Intelligence Agency made the decision that the cloud was secure enough for them. That made everybody … stand up and notice. So yesterday, when we were talking with all of the various people around economic development in Bahrain, I said, “The shot heard around the Middle East is that Amazon is located here in Bahrain.”

Just like what happened in America, it’s going to have a massive impact from a socioeconomic point of view here in the Middle East, and specifically in Bahrain.

Furrier: What are some of the things that you might expect to see, that they’ve got ready for [the Middle East]?

Wood: First of all, one thing I’ll say is, a marked difference from America is that the government and the business environment [in Bahrain] has agreed it’s important to move to the cloud. That in and of itself is a big difference [from] America.

In America, it’s been a lot more fragmented and it’s taken more time. I think the government and industry [are] seeing the value of the cloud globally, and they’re going to be able to move that much faster than even we did in America.

Furrier: One of the things you were involved in here was with AWS, the local Bahrain government, entrepreneurs, and General Keith Alexander, four-star general and head of the NSA. What are some of the things that you and General Alexander were discussing with the government here? Can you share, if appropriate, some of the things you were talking about?

Wood: I think we can apply best practices here, just like [we did] in America. I think the fact that they’ve gone to a cloud-first policy is a really good thing. The next step is to find a standard that you can actually look to from a security point of view, because with that standard, you can then have a common lexicon. That common lexicon allows you to share data between and among each other that much more quickly.

Furrier: What are some of the things that you would advise to [the Bahrain government] based on your experience?

Wood: From a cybersecurity perspective, I would want to do something similar … to what the United States government did. When the U.S. government adopted a cybersecurity policy, the so-called Cybersecurity Executive Order, there were two parts to it. The first was cloud first, which has been done [in Bahrain], and the second [part] was to adopt the [National Institute of Standards and Technology] NIST Framework, which gave a common lexicon for all the cybersecurity professionals to be able to push their workloads to the cloud.

And then guys like me, what we do is we push automation into that framework, which basically means we get out of the way of the mission and we help make the mission happen much more quickly.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit Bahrain event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for AWS Summit Bahrain 2018. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc. and the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the event sponsors, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE