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AWS announces new region in Canada

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Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#11

Post by a-priori »

davidjgraph wrote: post #7
ironlady wrote: post #4

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?

You can't. Most data transmitted between cities in Canada goes through the US.

The only mitigation is to make sure you encrypt everything in transit and ensure that the private keys never leave Canada.

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#12

Post by mynameisvlad »

davidjgraph wrote: post #7
ironlady wrote: post #4

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?

I don't believe there's any requirements for the data to never cross borders on transmission, just that it must be stored in Canada.

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#13

Post by psybin »

davidjgraph wrote: post #7
ironlady wrote: post #4

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?

It almost certainly goes through the US no matter what you do. Traffic going anywhere out of my city first drops down to a big peer exchange in the US, then back up into Canada.

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#14

Post by ohstopitu »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #8
ironlady wrote: post #4

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

Azure has had two Canadian data centers for half a year now if I'm not mistaken, so it's not like companies didn't have options, not even counting small Canadian providers that I'm sure also have offerings for people who need them.

Actually, when I worked at MS, one of the main reasons for slow Azure adoption in Canada was the lack of a datacenter in the country - IBM had one before Azure and almost all major bank providers had contracts with IBM.

However, in the last year, almost all major banks have moved to Azure and from what I've heard - a lot of companies don't mind it as much, but employees wanted to use AWS (familiarity I guess).

That said, MS has been on a hiring spree for TSPs and TAMs to expand as much as possible so it'll be fun to see what Amazon does to compete.

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#15

Post by neom »

DigitalOcean also has a DC in Canada, this is really useful for companies in Canada or doing business in Canada that have requirements around keeping Canadian customer data in Canada. Additionally the Canadian startup ecosystem seems to be doing pretty well relatively to other regions.

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#16

Post by ihsw »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #10
faeriol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The region should have become the Datacenter capital of North-America... Cold temperatures, Cheap (and renewable) power...

> Should have Is there a reason it didn't? (i'm not "in the know")

Shit internet up until recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Internet_Exchange

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#17

Post by giarc »

ironlady wrote: post #4

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

I work for a large healthcare organization and multiple times have seen group messages instructing staff not to use surveymonkey since the data was hosted in the States, and something about the Patriot act allowing US authorities to view the data without warrants or something.

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#18

Post by toomuchtodo »

a-priori wrote: post #11
davidjgraph wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?

You can't. Most data transmitted between cities in Canada goes through the US. The only mitigation is to make sure you encrypt everything in transit and ensure that the private keys never leave Canada.

And please please please make sure your server is configured to support Perfect Forward Secrecy.

https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best-practices/

Re: AWS announces new region in Canada

#20

Post by Twirrim »

neom wrote: post #15

DigitalOcean also has a DC in Canada, this is really useful for companies in Canada or doing business in Canada that have requirements around keeping Canadian customer data in Canada. Additionally the Canadian startup ecosystem seems to be doing pretty well relatively to other regions.

Data Locality is going to continue to be a strong driver for cloud providers getting a presence in different countries.

It feels like it's post-Snowden (but it may be I wasn't paying enough attention before then), but more and more countries have been passing data locality laws and are less willing to have their data residing in the US.

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