FBI gathers cloud intelligence as it prepares to move off-promise

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reportedly consulting cloud computing providers about the logistics of moving its data operations off-site, with the organisation aiming to be cloud-first in the next few years.

The country’s Federal Government has been implementing its cloud computing strategy, dubbed its “Cloud First” policy, since 2010, with each agency responsible for submitting and implementing their own plans. Progress has been slow, however, with many failing to properly cost plans or detail how legacy systems would be dealt with.

This week, however, the FBI issued a “Request for Information” (RFI) document in order to gauge a range of commercial cloud providers and determine whether off-site solutions would work for it.

In particular, the document says the agency “seeks to understand” the potential of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products so it can make an informed decision about its data management in the future.

The document also says the FBI is considering how to manage and standardise different services across the agency.

It continues: “Cloud computing will allow the FBI to efficiently manage, operate and run a very large-scale computing infrastructure to deliver the capacity, availability and performance that will permit users to focus on mission accomplishment.”

The FBI also has a list of requirements for potential service providers, which include the need for at least two US-based data centers - at least 1,000 miles apart with a capacity for 5,000 users at any time - and the provision of a “firewalled space” for official use.

Elsewhere the agency is gathering information about the risk of supplier lock-in, online security software and certification, and relevant pricing models. Disaster recovery is also a key area of focus for the FBI, as well as asking providers whether the agency’s users can have access to a private server uplink to allow them to avoid the public internet.

Suppliers have been given a deadline of 2 March 2018 to provide this information to the FBI.