Google Cloud today announced the private beta launch of Assured Workloads for Government, the company’s version of what some of its competitors would call their “government cloud.”
With Assured Workloads for Government, Google Cloud ensures that government agencies and their contractors can ensure that all data stays in its U.S. regions. Government agencies can also limit access to Google Cloud support personnel based on their citizenship, background check and geography. Later this year, Google will also enable a new support option that ensures that these users will get access from a U.S. Person, in a U.S. location with a target response time of 15 minutes for P1 cases.
Google Cloud notes that its system is also designed to allow government customers and contractors to meet the standards of the Department of Defense, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) — all while giving them users access to its full portfolio of services.
The company specifically notes that while other clouds build separate government cloud, the result of this is often that “government agencies having to run on less feature-rich, fortressed versions of commercial clouds to meet their needs.” It’s worth noting that Microsoft recently built out two new regions specifically for allowing government agencies to handle classified data on Azure, in addition to its regular Azure Government data centers. Similarly, with its GovCloud, AWS has long offered similar capabilities in two government-specific U.S. regions.
