GCHQ deal to store classified material in the Amazon cloud

BRITAIN’S most classified material is to be hosted in the cloud by Amazon after GCHQ struck a deal with the American tech giant, it has been reported.

MI5 and MI6 will also use the system provided by Amazon’s cloud computing arm AWS to store secret data, according to the Financial Times.

Amazon will not have access to information stored in the system, say reports. However, concerns are likely to be raised over the privacy and sovereignty implications of such material being hosted by a non-british company.

The new system will enable spies to share information from overseas more easily and enhance the use of speech recognition and other technologies.

Industry experts suggested that the deal could be worth up to 1bn over the next 10 years. The high-security cloud system is also set to be used by other government departments.

Earlier this year, GCHQ outlined how it intended to use AI to protect the UK from state-backed disinformation campaigns and other cyber attacks.

GCHQ said it would not discuss its business relationships with technology suppliers. AWS declined to comment.

The news came as the head of GCHQ revealed that cyber attacks have doubled in the past year, and he warned that Britain must “pay attention” to attacks from China.

Sir Jeremy Fleming called for more action to “sort out” ransomware attacks. He said that “criminals are making very good money from it and are often feeling that that’s largely uncontested”.

Sir Jeremy said the immediate priority was tackling “links between criminal and state actors” to bust ransomware criminals. Part of the solution is to “desimplify this” by removing it from the hands of citizens to keep them secure online. Figures on the scale of the problem will be released next month.

Advising the public on what they can do, Sir Jeremy said: “Back up your data, make sure you’ve got your admin rights sorted out, make sure your passwords are protected, work out where your thresholds are [and] have thought in advance how you would respond if you were approached for ransom.”

He also warned about a growing security threat from China. “China’s rise is altering the geopolitics in the region and the world, and so we all need to sit up and pay attention to that,” he said.

Earlier this month, Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, unveiled plans for a £5billion digital warfare centre to launch “offensive” cyber attacks in response to ransomware.