Amazon launches its private cloud

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has today announced it will offer a private cloud to work with its EC2 cloud service.

A private cloud allows for businesses to use the Amazon's hosting service while keeping more control of security and access than they would have with a public cloud.

The Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) has been designed to allow customers to create a set of resources within the cloud and then protect it by allowing only certain IPs to access the data via a secure virtual private network (VPN) attached to the business' established IT infrastructure.

Andy Jassy, senior vice president of AWS, said: "As more and more enterprises leverage the cloud, they want a simple, seamless way to migrate their large and complex IT infrastructures to AWS, and to use the security and management controls that their IT teams already know."

"We built Amazon VPC for this purpose - to allow any company to seamlessly connect their existing resources to the AWS cloud as if it were a part of their own data centre."

On top of this announcement, AWS is also releasing Multi-Factor Authentication (AWS MFA) which adds extra security for accessing a business' resources.

It will require the user to carry a small device with a rotating code. When they sign into their account, as well as their normal log in details, they will have to add this six-digit code as well.

The new services are available from today via the AWS website with the promise that further features will be integrated into the VPC in the future.

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.