Amazon Web Services Inc. today debuted a new cloud service for U.S. intelligence agencies that allows them to run computing jobs that need to classified as “secret.”

The launch of AWS Secret Region by Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing unit follows earlier efforts in government, including the formation of its GovCloud for public-sector customers six years ago and a $600 million deal in 2013 to provide a service to run “Top Secret” workloads for the Central Intelligence Agency. That was a seminal deal that signaled AWS’s ability to provide enterprise- and government-grade cloud services.

AWS is now the only commercial cloud provider that has regions serving government workloads across the “full range” of data classifications, including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret and Top Secret, said Teresa Carlson, vice president of AWS Worldwide Public Sector.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community can now execute their missions with a common set of tools, a constant flow of the latest technology and the flexibility to rapidly scale with the mission,” she said in a blog post. “The AWS Top Secret Region was launched three years ago as the first air-gapped commercial cloud and customers across the U.S. Intelligence Community have made it a resounding success.”

Amazon offered up an endorsement from John Edwards, the CIA’s chief information officer. “The AWS Secret Region is a key component of the Intel Community’s multi-fabric cloud strategy,” he said in a statement. “It will have the same material impact on the IC at the Secret level that C2S has had at Top Secret,” he added, referring to the intelligence community’s earlier Commercial Cloud Services deal with AWS.

The Secret Region will be available to all government agencies, not just intelligence agencies, but they must have their own “contract vehicles” and Secret-level access to the network. The need for government cloud services that are ultrasecure was made more apparent late last week when a security researcher revealed that the details of a Department of Defense spying program were left exposed by a contractor on AWS’s S3 cloud storage service. It was the latest of several similar instances in recent years, caused not by Amazon itself but personnel who misconfigure the service.

The announcement follows Microsoft Corp.’s announcement last month of Azure Government Secret, a similar service for classified data.

AWS holds its annual re:Invent conference next week in Las Vegas, where it’s expected to announce a wide range of new products in artificial intelligence, security and other areas.

Photo: Robert Hof