UPDATED 08:00 EDT / JULY 14 2020

CLOUD

Google aims to ease compliance concerns with Assured Workloads for Government

Google LLC today announced a new tier of cloud computing services for government agencies that it says can better compete against similar “government cloud” offerings from rivals such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

In a blog post, Google Cloud product managers Christopher Johnson and Bhavna Batra explained that compliance and security around data locality and access are key considerations for government users when it comes to cloud technologies because the information they work with is often of a highly classified nature. As such, rival government clouds have to make certain compromises in order to meet these requirements, and that inevitably means forsaking some of the technology and benefits that come with a modern commercial cloud.

“It often requires users to operate two distinct application and operation supply chains, adding cost, complexity and risk,” Johnson and Batra said.

Google’s answer to this problem is Assured Workloads for Government, currently available in private beta. The new service, announced at the Google Cloud Next OnAir online conference that runs nine weeks through Sept. 8, is said to make the full benefits of a commercial cloud platform available to government customers by simplifying the compliance configuration process.

“With Assured Workloads for Government, Google Cloud customers can quickly and easily create controlled environments where U.S. data location and personnel access controls are automatically enforced in any of our U.S. cloud regions,” Johnson and Batra said. “Assured Workloads for Government helps government customers, suppliers, and contractors to meet the high security and compliance standards set forth by the Department of Defense (i.e., IL4), the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS), and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), while still having access to all the latest features in our portfolio.”

Assured Workloads for Government offers access to Google’s full suite of cloud services, together with enhanced features to ensure that the government’s highest compliance and security standards are met.

For example, the service provides automatic enforcement of data location, enabling customers to store data at rest in a specified U.S. cloud region. In addition, the service enables government users to limit access by Google’s support personnel based on predefined attributes such as their citizenship, their geographical location and their ability to pass strict background checks. The service also enables automatic enforcement of product deployment locations, so that new resources can only be deployed in an authorized region.

assured-government-workloads

Assured Workloads for Government is one of the first services in Google’s new Confidential Computing portfolio, which is a suite of products that use new technology to encrypt data while it’s in use, as opposed to other services that only encrypt data while it’s at rest. The technology was developed in cooperation with the Confidential Computing Consortium, which Google is a founding member of.

Assured Workloads for Government has already been validated by the technology consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., which works with government agencies to help them modernize through the adoption of new technologies. Deloitte said the service will reduce the friction of compliance for its regulated government customers, while giving them Google Cloud’s newest technologies.

Google said Assured Workloads for Government should become generally available later in the year.

Image: MasterTux/Pixabay

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