AWS CISO Explains Why Its Security Strategy Outperforms Microsoft and Google

“We don’t play checkers, we play chess. And we’re playing chess at 150 miles per hour, on the internet, with everyone watching,” says CJ Moses, cloud cybersecurity pioneer and CISO at AWS.

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CJ Moses, cybersecurity guru: “We don’t play checkers, we play chess”

Whether it’s hunting down terrorist cybersecurity threats around the world at the FBI or playing a leading role in creating the world’s first virtual private cloud, according to CJ Moses Amazon Web Services has the most secure cloud in the world. the planet.

“We don’t play checkers, we play chess. And we’re playing chess at 150 miles per hour, on the internet with everyone watching,” said Moses, chief information security officer at AWS and vice president of engineering security, in an interview with CRN.

AWS CISO said his Seattle-based company is at the top of the cybersecurity cloud pyramid compared to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud because of AWS’s security culture, adoption of strategies learned from “paranoid life” of Moses working for the FBI and Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI).

Moses was hired by Amazon CEO – and former AWS CEO – Andy Jassy 15 years ago to bring his cybersecurity expertise and engineering skills from the FBI and US Air Force Office of Specialist Investigations (OSI) at AWS.

“[Amazon Chief Security Officer] Steve Schmidt and I have joined our story of hunting down hackers in the Wild West of the Internet, doing everything we’ve done around nation-state threat actors, counter-terrorism work, and we had the opportunity to build the technical infrastructure to be able to deliver the most secure cloud in the world,” said Moses.

“The reason I can say that is because we built it from the ground up. We built the culture. We took the culture of security that we had from our paranoid life in the FBI and OSI and all that stuff, and built it into the ownership model that’s part of the core environment and culture of Amazon,” he said.

[Related: AWS Marketplace’s ‘Incredible’ New Vendor Insights Tool: 5 Keys]

AWS Run Rate Hits $79 Billion

Last week AWS reported a 33% year-over-year sales jump in the second quarter of 2022, with total revenue reaching $19.74 billion.

The global cloud market leader now has an annualized run rate of $79 billion. The historic benchmark comes as Amazon invests billions in new data centers to expand its domestic and international cloud reach as demand for AWS cloud services soars.

Ensuring the security of networks, data and all of customers’ computing environments is paramount to Moses and the AWS security team, he said, as evidenced by various new security launches at AWS re :Inforce last week.

In an interview with CRN, Moses discusses why AWS outperforms Microsoft and Google Cloud in the world of cybersecurity, why cloud security is the future over on-premises, and AWS’ overall vision.

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