According to the publication, the secret contract was inked this year and analysts estimate its value to be between £500 million and £1 billion, citing sources acquainted with the discussions. MI5, the UK’s internal security force, and MI6, its foreign arm, as well as other government divisions, are said to be covered by the agreement. According to Ciaran Martin, former head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, it will allow UK intelligence to “extract insights from massive amounts of data in minutes, rather than weeks and months.” In 2013, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) signed a cloud data agreement with AWS, which was then expanded last year to include bids from Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.
