Amazon Executive: Cloud Computing the Most Secure Way to Run Corporate Computing

By Jay Greene 

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.- -- Amazon.com Inc.'s top cloud computing executive said that even with last week's massive internet outages, the web remains the most secure place for companies to run their computing.

Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy said that for most companies, security is "priority zero."

"You can't pass go without it," Mr. Jassy said during an appearance at The Wall Street Journal's WSJDLive 2016 global technology conference.

On Friday, attackers unleashed several massive attacks that rendered dozens of popular websites, including Twitter Inc. and Netflix Inc., unreachable for parts of the day. The attackers targeted domain-name-system services of web-technology provider Dynamic Network Services Inc., known as Dyn.

Some customers of Mr. Jassy's Amazon Web Services weren't spared, since Dyn is among several providers of DNS services to the company. Shortly after the attacks began, Amazon shut down its Dyn DNS use and rerouted it to alternative providers, restoring full service.

Even so, it illustrated a vulnerability corporate tech managers fear.

But Mr. Jassy said cloud-computing providers remain the most secure way to run corporate computing, "given their investment and the number of people and the number of investments they've made."

Mr. Jassy also talked about Amazon's willingness to experiment and fail. He cited the company's ill-fated foray into mobile phones as an example of a failure from which the company has learned. Some of the technology from the phone has made its way into other products.

"We like to say we're working on our next big failures," Mr. Jassy said.

That experimentation has led the company to open physical bookstores, in addition to its vast online operation. Amazon uses its recommendation technology to stock its physical stores to help customers find books they might not otherwise come across.

"We're very pleased with the results. It's very early," Mr. Jassy said. "We're optimistic about the business and doing more over time."

Write to Jay Greene at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 25, 2016 12:14 ET (16:14 GMT)

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