AWS for UK National Security and Defence

Data lakes and how you analyse them are key to making the informed decisions that transform how you operate. In this report, IDC finds that AWS “provides open, secure, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure that enables easy-to-build data lakes and analytics”. It also explains how we go beyond standard security tools.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) promotes the security benefits that can come from cloud adoption. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has also recognised this with its blog post ‘ More Secure in the Public Cloud’. The following IDC paper looks at the initiatives causing agencies to accelerate their cloud adoption plans, the risks IT leaders face by delaying, and how secure, compliant cloud environments help agencies achieve compliance for their sensitive workloads.

Snowball Edge is a self-contained piece of secure hardware, small enough to check in as a piece of airplane luggage. Discover how militaries can use it to stay connected in even the most extreme environments. Using Snowball Edge you can deliver multi-domain integration and information advantage to the tactical edge from unclassified to top secret levels.

Data is the key to mission success or failure. AWS has the expertise in areas including data collection at the edge, to actionable insights at the command centre, to help you process and analyse data. And to give it to the people who matter, wherever they are.

MoD Cloud ICE (Internet Connected Environment) is an accredited and supported public cloud environment available for MoD customers who want to migrate and modernise applications. It is suitable for workloads up to official-sensitive and is hosted within Authority Zone 3 (AZ3). MoD Cloud ICE is in AWS London Region only and is connected to the internet and currently reaches back into the Restricted Line Infrastructure (RLI) via the MoD gateway service.

With AWS analytics services you can build data lakes and start to interrogate data through AI, ML.. Find the fastest way to get answers from your data and give insights to your people. Get there faster with automation. And create your own, unique analytics services using AWS Sagemaker.

AWS edge services deliver data processing, analysis, and storage close to your endpoints, allowing you to deploy APIs and tools to locations outside AWS data centers. Get consistent AWS experiences across the cloud, on-premises, and at the edge while meeting ultra-low latency, data residency, and local processing needs. AWS hybrid solutions help you accelerate digital transformation, improve IT productivity, and differentiate end-user experiences.

AWS Ground Station lets you control satellites and process data, without having to build infrastructure when you scale. Space is the next frontier for defence. We're at the forefront of getting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data to the front line, fast.

“The UK’s ability to understand activity in the space domain is vital to supporting economic growth, strengthening our geopolitical position and protecting our critical national infrastructure. CGI started working with the RAF back in 2016 and we are proud to continue to work collaboratively with the MOD and UK Space Agency to deliver the AURORA capability in the MOD Cloud environment.”

Neil Timms, Senior Vice President for UK & Australia Space Defence and Intelligence at CGI

Faced with a growing demand for distance learning, in late 2020 the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) successfully migrated its Defence Learning Environment (DLE) to the Amazon Web Services (AWS), in just 2 months. AWS partner Netcompany worked on the project with AWS, the MoD’s Application Services DevOps Team (ASDT), and the Defence Learning and Management Capability program.

"When you are faced with a problem you have not faced before you’re forced to think laterally and think outside the box. That’s why we love to give our teams and particularly our early career staff these different and exciting challenges. It gives us the opportunity to engage with new technologies which are going to be really important to us in the future"

Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) organiser

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) wanted to replace its legacy hosting service for two critical services they offer British citizens – Emergency Travel Documents and legalising UK citizen documents. The new hosting service needed to reduce the requirement for repetitive, manual maintenance, drive cost efficiencies and improve the services being provided to the public. Learn how AWS partner Kainos delivered this migration seamlessly.