The Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT) and Google Cloud today announced they will be piloting the use of Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDC Hosted) to support CSIT's effort to harness AI in tackling Singapore's defence and security challenges.
 
CSIT, a member of the Defence Technology Community, has been collaborating with Google Cloud by providing its use cases and technical requirements to further enhance GDC Hosted. As part of the pilot, CSIT will trial the use of GDC Hosted on-premises, tapping on the solution’s built-in data management and pre-trained machine learning capabilities to process sensitive data.

GDC Hosted provides organisations in the public sector and highly regulated industries with a cloud platform that requires no connectivity to Google Cloud or the public internet for its operation and continued management. This gives organisations the ability to run workloads in their data centres with the functionality, flexibility, and scale of cloud services. This includes the ability to form clusters across multiple GDC Hosted zones for added protection against system failures, and more flexible, modular options for adding extra compute resources like the graphics processing units (GPUs) designed for running demanding AI workloads.
 
Harnessing AI for defence needs
 
Designed to support data, operational, and software sovereignty requirements, GDC Hosted includes the company’s advanced AI and database services like Vertex AI and AlloyDB Omni, and increases customer control and transparency over sensitive data. Updates to GDC Hosted, including Google Cloud’s pre-trained AI models, are accessed through secure hardware and installed by the customer itself. As a user of GDC Hosted, CSIT retains total operational control over all data and software, ensuring the safety and security of mission-critical workloads.
 
Built using industry-leading open source components like Kubernetes, GDC Hosted also provides access to familiar developer tools, enabling CSIT’s technical personnel to operate GDC Hosted and its applications with minimal retraining.
 
“CSIT develops digital capabilities for defence and security, such as in cyber defence. The collaboration with Google Cloud on GDC Hosted allows us to tap on its expertise in data management, cloud technologies, and AI while keeping sensitive data secure,” said Darren Teo, Chief Executive, Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies.
 
"By offering full isolation alongside integrated AI services and access to an open ecosystem, GDC Hosted combines the benefits of fully managed and scalable infrastructure for running mission-critical workloads with operational flexibility,” said Mitesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Technology and Solutions, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud. “By working together with CSIT to meet its unique specifications for processing sensitive data, we look forward to further contributing to its efforts to remain at the forefront of the evolving cyber defence landscape.”