The German government has awarded a major IT contract to cloud services provider Ionos worth some €410 million ($440 million), Ionos reported on Tuesday. The “private Enterprise-Cloud” is to be certified by Germany’s information security agency (BSI) and will be operated in the computing centres of the government’s IT centre (ITZBund), which falls under the Finance Ministry. The new Ionos system is to be sealed off from the internet, using the concept known as “air gapping,” which makes it almost impossible for outsiders to access sensitive information. This means that software updates are don…