I believe AWS and Azure can support government workloads. For example, Azure is part of IRAP which means the Australian Signals Directorate has signed off on them for certain types of non-classified workloads.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/TrustCenter/Compliance/CCSL

> Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Office 365 were among the first cloud services to achieve this certification for the storage and processing of unclassified (DLM) data. The certification recognizes the successful completion, review, and acceptance of a comprehensive assessment undertaken by an Information Security Registered Assessor. This certification can be leveraged by all Australian and New Zealand government agencies.

> ...certification provides assurance to public sector customers in government and their partners that Microsoft has appropriate and effective security controls in place for the processing, storage, and transmission of unclassified sensitive data (the majority of government, healthcare, and education data in Australia).

> AWS isn't capable of supporting confidential information?

It's not a yes/no question. It depends on the information: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/

But as far as census goes, no. I don't expect any country to be stupid enough to trust a foreign third-party with census information. Even in the US, AWS has separate zones for federal applications. This includes people who specifically can touch the data involved.

AWS is certainly capable of supporting confidential information.

Are two Junior engineers capable of producing an actually scalable, secure, fault tolerant system with adequate consistency, integrity, availability? Probably not. In a couple of days? Almost certainly not.

Could it have been done in less time and for less cost than a government did it for? Almost certainly yes.

We've managed to get confidential data stored in Azure for a large financial organisation, all compliances they required passed.

A server is a server right?

Problem could be cultural and generational. Some old school types like the idea of a server without redundancies and fire prevention and fault tolerance and high security clearance in a data center. They want it to be blinking lights at them in a cupboard on premises. They feel it is safe due to physical proximity, even though their firewalls are like cottage cheese.

We're noticing that issue with health data for medical practises. Older people are suspicious of cloud. The younger generation are more savvy.

The younger generation are more gullible, lacking awareness of data security, oblivious to data sovereignty, and easily distracted by squirrels.

An Australian census is never going to take place in hardware controlled by a foreign national on foreign soil, especially not in a country where cloud servers have been seized in the past for simply having the possibility of containing data associated with a person associated with a crime.

One thing you will learn as you gain real world experience is that there is no such thing as "too paranoid" when it comes to IT projects handling sensitive data.

I know this is a popular way to look at things around here, but no. It's not about cloud / no cloud. People with sensitive data welcome VMs and cloud deployment - as long as the cloud is in a very separate datacentre with only local people handling it.

Look at the actual rules and what risks they want to protect from: http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/4a256353001af3...

Here are some of them:

    2. an audited linking environment, involving staff activity being logged, monitored and, if
    inappropriate activity is found, investigated. Any misuse would result in immediate
    termination of access for the staff member, with further sanctions imposed if necessary;
    3. ABS staff and in-posted officers sign legally binding Undertakings of Fidelity and Secrecy to
    ensure they are aware of their obligation to protect confidential information, and the
    consequences of disclosure (which include criminal penalties);
    4. enforcement of the clear desks and clear screen policy;
    5. access on a ‘need to know’ basis;

How do you enforce those rules on AWS / Azure / whatever provider's staff? How do you make sure only people with appropriate clearance access the servers?

    7. Vulnerability Assessments are carried out on all new IT Systems by specialised staff in IT
    Security trained in the field of Ethical Hacking;

How do you get those providers to agree to internal pentest exercises?

At that point, it's just easier to stuff some more servers in the government datacentre - completely isolated from other projects. And whether it's cloud or not is a completely separate thing - it may as well be on OpenStack.

> Older people are suspicious of cloud. The younger generation are more savvy.

So no, this is complete bullshit. (and so is putting this as us-vs-them - I'm part of a fairly young generation in the CS, working on cloud infrastructure, and I still would not want to see census data processed anywhere outside of "no phones in the building" government environment)

That's great, but you are trusting AWS. If someone has access to the server hardware thay can completely own you and all your TLS data. End to end encryption is one way, but my understanding is that achieving this in browser with javascript isn't a good idea.

It's more that if you don't have exclusive access to the hardware then you have no security. Fine for most things, but storing an entire population's details not so much.