It's true that relying solely on a cloud ecosystem without continuous protections isn't safe. That's why many government agencies should consider what I classify as a co-location strategy. By implementing this approach, agencies can use private tunneling applications with encryption and APIs to securely fetch non-sensitive information.

The cloud provider—such as AWS—can still be used for application hosting, but a private network should be established between the cloud environment and the co-location facility.

Why is this beneficial?

In a cloud environment, public ingress can be cut off instantly if needed, minimizing exposure.

Applications can be designed to serve most (or all) of their data through regional gateways connected to the co-location.

By placing co-location facilities close to critical data sources, latency is reduced while ensuring data remains protected and accessible within a secure network.

This approach allows organizations to balance cloud scalability with enhanced security, ensuring critical data remains under strict control while applications remain flexible and resilient.