Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to launch a second cloud region for federal customers' secret-classified workloads by the end of this year.

As reported by FedScoop, the second region will enable federal customers with "secret-level" workloads to be deployed in multiple regions, thus improving resiliency and speed.

“The launch of the AWS Secret-West Region will strengthen US AI leadership and accelerate the development of advanced capabilities and groundbreaking innovation,” said Dave Levy, VP of worldwide public sector at AWS. “Customers using the new AWS Secret-West Region will be able to use advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud provider and see their critical missions enhanced by the operational speed, scalability, security, and innovation that AWS provides.”

AWS has been serving federal customers with increased security needs since 2014, when it launched its first secret-level region for use solely by the CIA and delivered as a result of a ten-year, $600m contract (with inflation, now worth almost $830m) signed in 2013.

In 2017, that region was to all members of the US intelligence community.

The company also has two "Top Secret" level regions, the second of which launched in 2021.

AWS was one of five winners of the US intelligence community's Commercial Cloud Energy contract in 2020.

Also speaking on the new region, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said: "Opening up and making it possible for us to use AI applications in the top secret clouds has been a game changer."

He added that the intelligence community looks to AWS for the "available tools that exist, largely in the private sector, to make it so that our intelligence professionals, both collectors and analysts, are able to focus their time and energy on the things that only they can do," thus ensuring the "safety, security and freedom of the American people.”

AWS, while a US company, does not solely work with US intelligence.

In the UK, Britain's three spy agencies were revealed to be using AWS to host top-secret data in 2021, a move that has been criticized due to concerns around enabling a foreign-owned business's potential access to confidential information.

The cloud giant is also working with the Australian government, winning a $1.3bn contract in 2024 to build a data center specifically for top-secret information and enabling staff from agencies such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service to collaborate without using the open Internet.