Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance

Without proper documentation, unhoused individuals face overwhelming barriers to stability and opportunity. But new technologies and tools address these problems while helping the organizations who serve vulnerable populations. One innovative solution called Kiip, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), takes a unique approach to this problem by empowering individuals with access and control over their own personal, vital documents.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) developed the Data Fabric Security (DFS) on AWS solution to support the identity and access needs of a multi-organization system. With DFS on AWS, federal customers can accelerate joint interoperability, modernization, and data-driven decision making in the cloud by removing barriers that prevent systems and users from communicating while still strengthening security via Zero Trust principles.

What do AWS public sector customers need to know about the State Risk and Authorization Management Program (StateRAMP) and how can you use AWS to help meeting StateRAMP requirements? In this blog post, learn a quick recap on what StateRAMP is and how it differs from the similar Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). 

Justice and public safety agencies and their solution providers are building highly available, resilient, and secure applications on AWS at a rapid pace. As these solutions are built, AWS’s innovative features and security controls can help customers comply with the latest Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy updates, and align with CJIS compliance not only in AWS GovCloud (US), but also in AWS (US) Commercial regions. Customers can confidently deploy CJIS workloads in either AWS (US) Region, while maintaining access to simple and powerful cloud native tools to manage the full lifecycle of sensitive data.

The Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS (LZA) solution deploys a cloud foundation that is architected to align with AWS best practices and multiple global compliance frameworks. Customers with highly-regulated workloads and complex compliance requirements can use the LZA to better manage and govern their multi-account environment. Some of these same customers are also using VMware Cloud on AWS to integrate on-premises vSphere environments, allowing them to move existing workloads to the cloud more quickly. In this blog post, explore the technical considerations related to integrating your LZA landing zone with your VMware Cloud on the AWS environment.

Some US federal agencies and those who collaborate with them must support an automated, secure, and scalable multi-account cloud environment that meets Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) standards. To support these needs, AWS customers and partners can deploy the Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA) on AWS. Recently, AWS worked with Coalfire, a FedRAMP-approved third-party assessment organization (3PAO) and AWS Partner, to assess and verify the LZA solution.

With new funding opportunities available, now is the time for state and local government agencies to act quickly and think strategically about their approach to building a resilient whole-of-state (WOS) cybersecurity strategy. Some trailblazing states have had measures of success in establishing a WOS footprint by thinking strategically about short and long-term outcomes to support secure digital transformations and protect constituent data and services. Learn some best practices that organizations can consider in their WOS cybersecurity approach.

AWS joins the White House, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, and other leaders in government, industry, and the education community to improve the cybersecurity resilience of K12 education communities. As part of our support, AWS is bolstering our longstanding collaboration with K12 education communities, state departments of education, teaching and learning companies, and EdTechs through key commitments, including $20 million for a K12 Cyber Grant Program available to all K12 school districts and state departments of education.

AWS announced the availability of Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA) for Education, an industry-specific deployment of the LZA on AWS, designed to further support education customers in designing cloud environments for their compliance needs. The LZA on AWS solution is architected to align with AWS best practices and multiple, global compliance frameworks. The new LZA for Education builds on the LZA to help customers secure their research workloads or workloads containing student data by giving them a set of default configurations that they can use as a starting point and iterate on to define security and compliance posture as code.

Cyber events are unfortunately becoming a common event in higher education. When Hartnell College experienced a cyber event in 2022, they used AWS while working with AWS Partner Ferrilli to recover and rebuild their systems. Based on the lessons learned from Hartnell College’s experience, higher education leaders can explore certain steps to better prevent and prepare against cyber events.