Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced AWS GovCloud ” to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements.”.

The annoucement is interesting in many ways including addressing the issues with compliance.

“Previously, government agencies with data subject to compliance regulations such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs how organizations manage and store defense-related data, were unable to process and store data in the cloud that the federal government mandated be accessible only by U.S. persons.

Because AWS GovCloud is physically and logically accessible by U.S. persons only (the actual instances reside within an AWS virtual private cloud), government agencies can now manage more heavily regulated data in AWS while remaining compliant with strict federal requirements.

The new Region offers the same high level of security as other AWS Regions, and supports existing AWS security controls and certifications such as FISMA, FIPS 140-2 compliant end points, SAS-70, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS Level 1. AWS also provides an environment that enables agencies to comply with HIPAA regulations.”

According to AWS, they already hosts recovery.gov, treasury.gov.