Diana Gowen Discusses Recent Developments in Cyber at Qwest

This was written by Michael W. Cheek on Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 11:09.

Diana Gowen

Last month, Qwest Communications opened a new facility in the Washington, DC area for cloud computing infrastructure services, its 17th Cyber Center in the nation. In a recent interview with Fed Cloud Blog, Diana Gowen, senior vice president and general manager at Qwest Government Systems, discussed the opening of the new center and the cloud computer infrastructure services Qwest provides.

“For us, it’s a sorely needed third center in the D.C. Area. Having another 100,000 square feet to offer customers is a great thing for us,” Gowen said. “It enables us to launch, with very little effort, our cloud computing services, that is — infrastructure as a service.”

Both Qwest and its clients, both in the government and private sectors, are excited for the new center. “The reasons that customers are excited about that — on the commercial side, it’s because it’s because it’s fast time to market [and] with our government customers it’s a faster time to their applications and the development of them,” she said.

The new center is equally adept at providing for the government and private sector markets based on the security requirements of the organization.

“This new cybercenter that we’ve opened up is divided into vaults and pods that are equipped to be SCIFs — secure compartmented information facilities,” Gowen said.  “So, from that perspective, if you had classified information, you could certainly store it and the servers there.”

Cyberspace is not the only domain in which the new facility has increased security.

“In this cybercenter physical security that is beyond what you see sometimes. We have separate, gated entrances . . . and most cybersecurity centers have cameras all around, and, of course, this one has that, but I think that the additional gated entrances and security passwords that you need to get in add an additional layer of physical security,” she said. “Then, once you’re into the facility, there are additional things that we look for to assure that only people that are authorized are in there.”

The CyberCenter will facilitate Qwest’s cloud-based services to federal clients which help to manage the IT environment and mitigate threats and attacks.

Chris Ancell, executive vice president of Qwest Business Markets Group, said “Our managed CyberCenters offer customers a compelling alternative to taking on the considerable risk and expense of building, maintaining and staffing their own facilities.”