Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its second Top Secret region: AWS Top Secret-West. 

The new region, licensed to operate workloads classified as Top Secret under US security classification, adds several availability zones that are geographically separate from AWS Top Secret-East.

Together, the two Top Secret regions enable the defence, intelligence, and national security communities of the US to deploy multi-region architectures that assure maximum availability and resilience to national security missions.

Through availability zones, customers can run their applications and databases at ultra-low latency much more reliably than with a single data centre. AWS also supports replicating data synchronously to a different Availability Zone within the same Region, or asynchronously to a different Region.

Commenting on security, AWS said its latest Top Secret region adheres to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Intelligence Community Directive (ICD 503), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-53 Revision 4.

The firm is the first commercial cloud provider accredited to handle government workloads across the full spectrum of US government data, including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret.

“In 2011, we launched AWS GovCloud (US-West), making AWS the first cloud provider to build cloud infrastructure designed to meet US government security and compliance needs,” said AWS in a blog post.

“In 2014, we launched our first Top Secret region, AWS Top Secret-East, which was the first air-gapped commercial cloud accredited to support classified workloads. In 2017, we launched the AWS Secret Region.

«Today, with the launch of AWS Top Secret-West, we continue our support for mission workloads that span the full range of US government classifications.»