Amazon's AWS is Now Hosting the Defense Department's Most Classified Data

Amazon.com's (AMZN) cloud computing division Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the company's most profitable arms, and is now hosting the U.S. Department of Defense's most sensitive information.·Zacks

Amazon.com’s AMZN cloud computing division Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the company’s most profitable arms, and it recently gained a new customer: the U.S. Department of Defense.

Earlier this week, the DoD granted Amazon a provisional authorization to host its Impact Level 5 workloads, which are the Pentagon’s and U.S. military’s most classified information. Only two other tech companies are allowed to store this data: Microsoft MSFT and IBM IBM.

“This further bolsters AWS as an industry leader in helping surrport the DoD’s critical mission in protecting our security,” said Amazon in a statement. “The AWS services support a variety of DoD workloads, including workloads contained sensitive controlled unclassified information and National Security Systems information.”

While the Defense Department is already using AWS to host sensitive, mission-critical workloads, this week’s announcement shows just how much Amazon’s cloud services are trusted. AWS is the dominant cloud service provider throughout the U.S. intelligence community as well after its $600 million contract with the CIA.

Last quarter, AWS revenues totaled $4.1 billion, marking growth of 42% year-over-year and 12% sequentially. This came in-line with recent growth rates, meaning that Amazon AWS was able to maintain its impressive momentum in the second quarter.

Currently, Amazon is a #5 (Strong Sell) on the Zacks Rank, and shares have gained over 31.5% year-to-date.

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