In the boot of a rugged jeep built for difficult terrain, is a 21-by-12-inch case. At first glance, it seems innocuous enough to be a CPU or a large storage device. Yet, at its very core, the AWS Snowball is probably Ukraine’s first line of digital defence against the Russian offensive.
For months now, the rugged hardware, developed by Amazon Web Services is helping keep data continuity alive in a war-torn region. AWS Snowball ensures cloud computing and storage in areas without broadband or data services owing to calamities like flood, hurricanes and war.
In Ukraine, an unspecified number of Snowballs are doing the rounds, as AWS helps the European nation complete its data migration to the cloud, since the Russian invasion earlier this year.
“It’s better I don’t disclose the exact quantity of Snowball devices on the ground, but what I can say is we have received these devices and have started using them immediately,” said Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, speaking to journalists at AWS Re:Invent conference.
“We’re trying to talk about our infrastructure quite moderately because the Russians have targeted our energy infrastructure,” Federov added, “But I like that most Russian cruise missiles can’t destroy the cloud.”
Data-migration movement underway
Ukraine and Amazon Web Services have been allies of sorts ever since the threat of war broke out earlier this year. On February 22, the Ukraine Government passed a law allowing all public sector data, like property title deeds, to be uploaded on to the cloud.
Soon after Russian attacks began, three Snowball devices were transported to Ukraine by air and road — a process that Federov called “the first part of preserving Ukraine’s data”. In fact, he said these strategic decisions were a critical part of “the most technologically advanced war in human history.”
He said: “The importance and value of securing our data is priceless; there hasn’t been a day where we haven’t been able to work even as cruise missiles attacked us and there were power shortages.”
Aside of Russian shelling, Ukraine has also been subjected to a host of cyber-attacks that have targeted critical information. However, the country has persevered to prevail, thus far. It made headlines recently for opening nearly 80,000 bank accounts in a single day.
Ukraine’s homegrown Diia app has helped citizens create digital lockers of sorts to store IDs and important documents on their smartphones to substitute for their physical counterparts. The country is also contemplating a way of conducting court hearings online, amid continued warfare.
In July, AWS was awarded the Ukraine Peace Prize for helping Ukraine with its cloud migration ambitions. The company has already made an impact in disaster-hit regions through its Disaster Response vertical, assisting in search and rescue, relief and logistics through a host of AWS Snow devices.
First Published: Dec 14, 2022 6:32 PM IST
