Large quantities of diapers, blankets, food, hygiene kits and also toys were flown to Ukraine to supply the local people. But war refugees in Poland and other parts of Europe were also cared for in this way. But it wasn't just the local people who received support. There was also great concern that the country's central, system-critical data could be destroyed by the war. Through a large-scale clandestine data backup operation, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has secured the heart of digital Ukraine beyond the reach of Russian dictator Putin.
Amazon secures the future of Ukraine
In this way, Amazon ensured that Ukraine can continue to thrive economically after the end of the war. In a digitalized world, data is one of the most important things that can be destroyed in a war: through the destruction of data centers, through power outages, such as those currently being caused by Russia through the targeted destruction of critical energy infrastructure, but also through deliberate deletion operations in the worst cases case, the complete takeover of Ukraine by Russia. Government, tax, banking and property data should be saved from destruction.
But abuse should also be prevented after the end of the war, for example when it comes to proving ownership rights to land, real estate or companies. It would not be the first time that the turmoil of war led to an unstructured transfer of property from the conquered to the conquerors. Much of this sensitive data is only available in digital form. What actually still exists on paper can fall victim to a missile attack at any time.
Data backup prepared for a long time
For months, Amazon has been securing this sensitive data in a large-scale operation and backing it up in the AWS Cloud. The difficulty here is the unstable and insecure data connections. Simply uploading petabyte amounts of data (a petabyte is equivalent to a million gigabytes) has proven to be impractical. Amazon has therefore resorted to conventional measures and has well-trained employees personally retrieve the data from Ukraine.
The story behind the scenes
Since the beginning of the war, Amazon has been cooperating closely with the Ukrainian government to secure this systemically important data. Important data is downloaded from clouds or servers within Ukraine and stored on suitcase-sized solid state computer storage units called Snowball Edge. Amazon employees take these mobile storage devices out of the country. The sensitive data is then uploaded to the Amazon cloud so that it can be safely used for reconstruction after the war is over.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the 31-year-old Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, called the war between Russia and Ukraine the most technologically advanced war in human history. He wasn't just referring to weapons, but also to data.
“The leadership of Amazon Web Services made a decision that saved the Ukrainian government and economy.”
Mykhailo Fedorov, the 31-year-old Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine
So far, Amazon has secured around 10 petabytes, i.e. 10 million gigabytes, of data. Together with the relief supplies, the group has already invested $75 million in aid to Ukraine.
Priceless commitment
According to Fedorov, this commitment is invaluable because it protects the critical information structure that is crucial to the functioning of the economy, tax system, banking and government.
According to reports in the Los Angeles Times, the initiative for this data backup operation came from Amazon's head of government transformation, Liam Maxwell.
The department had already been cooperating with the Ukrainian government for some time when Russia's imminent attack on Ukraine began to emerge in January. In February, a Ukrainian law was changed that made it mandatory to store critical data on servers in Ukraine. This made the legal basis for cloud backup on foreign servers possible.
Reacted lightning fast
On the day of the Russian invasion, February 24, Maxwell met with Ukrainian Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko at the Ukrainian Embassy in London to discuss details of exactly what data needed to be secured as quickly as possible. The result was a list that included the country's most important data: population registers, land and property registers, tax payment records, bank records, educational registers, anti-corruption databases and more.
In total, 27 Ukrainian ministries, 18 Ukrainian universities, the country's largest distance learning school, which is currently providing distance learning to hundreds of thousands of displaced children, and dozens of other private sector companies were involved, including Ukraine's largest private financial institution, PrivatBank.
The Snowball units were flown from Dublin to Krakow and then discreetly smuggled across the border into Ukraine. The “snowballs”, each filled with around 80 terabytes of data, are then taken out of the country in equally discreet ways and the data is uploaded to the AWS cloud, the Amazon Business Cloud, where it is then stored on AWS servers worldwide - outside of reach of Russia.
“You can’t take out the cloud with a cruise missile.”
Liam Maxwell
Not entirely selfless
The security operation required great organization and a lot of technical understanding. In addition, some effort was made to intensively train Ukrainians on the AWS cloud system. Refugees in Poland and other European countries also received free training. In addition to the ability to use the AWS system, important technical skills were taught and potential young talent for the AWS program was identified.
In the future, Ukraine will not remain the only government that outsources its most important data to AWS servers. Initial discussions with other countries are already underway. East Asian states are said to be particularly interested.
Source:
Los Angeles Times
Amazon
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