UK Government To Share Restricted Files In the Cloud 44
twoheadedboy writes "The UK Government wants to use the cloud to share restricted files. Given the concerns around cloud and security, this will worry some. Nevertheless, a deal between the services arm of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and SaaS provider Huddle has been penned. The SaaS service will run in the FCO's internal cloud, known as the Government Secure Application Environment (GSAE). This will allow civil servants, diplomats and other Government staff to share documents up to the secrecy level IL3, or Restricted."
Cloud (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cloud (Score:4, Interesting)
Right. So the government will share internal documents on internal servers. Aside from the buzz and the fud associated with the word "cloud", what is the news in this story?
Huddle got a gov't contract? Good for them.
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Just give me a second to copy all these files I suddenly have access to, to my iPhone...
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Any public sector jobs have far stricter rules regarding the procurement of employees
...rules for government overseen by government, without separation of powers or accessibility of information for the public to audit.
The British empire was built on hypocrisy: the appearance of fair rules and staunch ability to look offended at the thought that they might be disobeyed; the implementation of anything but. Its legacy remains throughout government, and things have got much worse since the profit motive of private-public partnerships was reintroduced - John Company is back from the dead.
Might as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No doubt along with NHS medical records. [slashdot.org] Who do we sue when, invariably, it all goes wrong and how much public liabilty do these "cloud" companies have?
Private "Cloud" (Score:1)
This is a non-story. Third-party provides IT services to a government. Happens all the time.
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there is no difference between "Government uses cloud-storage products form Huddle to share files" and "Government uses Sharepoint from Microsoft to share files". If the GSAE (some kind of VPN? found no explanation for this service) is secure a common platform for file exchange can be a Good Thing (tm)
CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop using that word. It makes you sound technologically illiterate.
You mean via a network, or on the internet, or something similar. "The cloud" is a stupid buzzword that needs to die RIGHT NOW.
Re:CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD (Score:5, Funny)
why the bad mood? is it cloudy at your place?
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If it means we can finally start moving vendor lock in from terminals to servers in the enterprise I would still be in a sunny disposition, regardless of the dark clouds outside and buzz words flying around.
As a web dev I'm less anti-Microsoft these days, but certainly very much still against governments essentially spending top dollar on being Microsoft shops while allowing their employees to connect (Active Directory/Sharepoint anyone?) to the main network with Windows boxes ONLY (usually running outdat
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It’s Britain. It’s always cloudy there. And it rains very often. On everyone’s parade, too.
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Maybe there aren't any happy clouds over there? :)
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Please stop using that word. It makes you sound technologically illiterate.
You mean via a network, or on the internet, or something similar. "The cloud" is a stupid buzzword that needs to die RIGHT NOW.
Uh, die right now? Yeah, good iLuck with that iShit.
Besides, stop getting all wrapped up in a single-syllable word. It's a word. It never did anything to you directly, so lay off and start attacking those CIOs who think they know what's best because they read all about the "cloud" while sitting in the airplane.
Buzzwords don't kill IT. The leaders that waste money and stand behind lame-ass concepts do.
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No, the mean the cloud. IT's what we call a distributed storage access able from many point, even point not yet defined.
It's has meaning and value. That fact that you can't see that is YOUR limitation.
Network. That's how you connect, that says nothing about storage or distribution of the data, so that would be useless. /. and amazon.
on the internet - The fact that you say that tells me you don't actually know what the internet actually is other then a link to
To quote NIST:
"Cloud computing is a model for ena
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Please stop using that word. It makes you sound technologically illiterate.
You mean via a network, or on the internet, or something similar. "The cloud" is a stupid buzzword that needs to die RIGHT NOW.
Yeah let revert to the old Mainframe label.
Cloud or no, it all depends on the security used (Score:5, Insightful)
If we pull the cloud buzzword out of the picture and consider this a remote storage/collaberation option, it can be decently secure, if controls are put in place doing encryption on multiple levels.
On the workgroup level, PGP NetShare can do a decent job, especially if the PGP keys are stored on cryptographic hardware tokens.
On the enterprise level, there are various IRM/encryption systems which can help, be it LockLizard or others. There is even one built into Windows/Office that is fairly usable.
The key (pardon the pun) is how this gets implemented. Done right, a compromise of the external disks may net a bunch of unreadable files. Done wrong, and the UK might as well just seed their snapshots to demonoid's tracker.
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Sorry, If it's not open source, compiled in house, and uses data encrypted BEFORE it leaves our network -- It's not a secure service. Also: I put it to you that a closed source program or OS is considered harmful in terms of security and transparency (read trust-ability) -- This goes for LockLizard, Symantec's PGP NetShare, and especially Windows -- The US, UK, Russian, Chinese and other governments have the Windows source code, why is that? Security, and also to look for exploit vectors... Being a secur
Already doing so... (Score:2)
I thought the US government spearheaded sharing classified files with the cloud. They just called it Tor over here.
Tomorrow's headline: (Score:1)
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You are assuming they'll find those files. Do they routinely search TPB?
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But if they = media, the ones that make the headlines? Yes, because they love stuff like this these days.
Good idea (Score:2)
Think of all the disk space you can save by sharing it with Julian Assange.
Advantage (Score:2)
At least a junior civil servant can't get drunk and leave a cloud in the back of a taxi.
Unless he went for a curry after the pub.
Impact Level 3 (Score:1)
It's worth noting that IL3 isn't exactly top secret - patient records (such as xray scans) are also classified as IL3.
Really top secret stuff is IL6 which has a very different set of security requirements. Whether this makes it more secure is a different matter, but don't expect diplomatic cables, submarine designs and MI6 café menus on this system.
Many of you son't seem to know what the Cloud is (Score:2)
From the NIST:
"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."
What you think it needs to be offsite, run by someone else or accessibly by anyone show you have no fucking clue.
I wish /. had personal tags. I would love to start filtering put poster who regula
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I'm still trying to get over the urge to vomit from first reading the buzzword collision of "iCloud".
Let's just cut to the chase... (Score:2)
Let's save everyone a lot of time and energy. Have D.C. Bureaucrats duct tape classified documents to one anothers' ass, Then en masse assemble at Radio City doing the Can-Can in a dance line. Whatever you can read... you can keep.
Besides saving tremendous time and energy on all sides, it should prove incredibly entertaining... perhaps we can sell tickets to help reduce the deficit.