DOD Approves Google Public Sector’s Cloud Hosting of Classified Information

The Department of Defense has authorized Google Public Sector to process the department’s secret and top secret classified information, as well as Intelligence Community workloads. 

According to Google Public Sector, its Google Distributed Cloud Hosted offering is an air-gapped solution capable of such functions as computing and storage, data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence even without a public internet connection. The Google solution will be competing against the cloud platforms of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Oracle, Nextgov/FCW reported Tuesday.

Leigh Palmer, Google vice president of delivery and operations, announced the DOD authorization at the Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, describing the approval as “another significant milestone” for the company. Palmer said GDC Cloud was developed via “a security-first approach” following zero trust standards, Google best practices and government security guidelines.

Google established its public sector division in 2022 to explore opportunities in the government market, which spends over $100 billion on technology annually, according to Nextgov/FCW. Palmer noted that the division’s current federal government customers include the U.S. Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office, which uses Google Cloud technology for its maintenance jobs.