“ That ' s the army hosting environment and the army data warehouse . One of those is just storing data , while the hosting environment is hosting a lot of applications . It ' s also got a DevSecOps environment within it as well , which is going to have to move as quickly as we can physically do it without introducing too much risk .”
And risk is the key word here . Adopting the cloud for certain elements of the digital environment at too quick a pace can introduce gaps that create attack vectors , leaving the system prone to attacks and vulnerabilities . This could prove catastrophic for both the BA and the UK ’ s national security , so ensuring that the environment hosts the range of applications needed without introducing risk is a tricky balancing act .
“ To me , the adoption of cloud is about balancing the risk of going too quickly , causing problems , undermining your ongoing running of the system versus the opportunity of being in the cloud . The security wraps provided by Microsoft and Amazon are world-class – which should help drive quicker opportunities – and they ' re not going to let that drop ; we should therefore trust it implicitly at the moment . “ We provide a lot of that security via young men and women who are wearing green suits while sitting in a room 24 / 7 , when we ’ d really rather have them out in the field to deliver war fighting capability .”
Unlike the many outlandish projections of future armies that are being detailed currently , it ’ s important to recognise that the integration of the cloud and digital capabilities across the army isn ’ t
to reduce the volume of human soldiers , but to enhance their skills and capabilities instead . Adopting the cloud , and the world-class security wraps provided alongside , means freeing soldiers up for more active defensive roles .
“ Cloud at Secret is a bit of a challenge , and defensives are working their damndest to do that . In terms of AI / ML , for example , coming to life in the secret environment , we need a hyperscale cloud – particularly for some of the stuff we want to do with that . But at the official sensitive level , what I ' m really excited about is this idea of the Azure service environment . Safire , our analytics platform , is a brilliant platform that ’ s sat OnPrem at the moment .
“ The potential is huge . And not just in the war fighting space . Futures – the people who deal with designing how we fight in the future – are very engaged in the AI debate . To me , I think we ’ ll reap more rewards from AI / ML in supporting infrastructure in those other areas .”
technologymagazine . com 59