Category: Security

With a growing focus on cybersecurity and available grant funding, many states are planning to protect state agencies, cities, counties, and schools. At the state and federal levels, programs are funded to support these efforts. State and local government (SLG) agencies now have procurement questions to ask and decisions to make to maximize governance and security, simplify vendor management, and accelerate the overall process within a heavily regulated procurement environment. Learn three important considerations for public sector procurement of cybersecurity solutions, as well as best practices from AWS for leveraging these new cybersecurity programs.

Many organizations within state and local government (SLG) and education must build digital environments and services that meet a variety of dynamic security and compliance considerations, such as StateRAMP and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Learn key top-level best practices from AWS for how to use AWS Security Services to meet the unique needs of education and SLG organizations.

Public sector customers face challenges to accomplish complex missions with limited resources. Many IT teams are tasked with implementing centralized network security via third-party firewall appliances; protecting internet access by allowing secure connections to only approved destinations; and scaling security across many AWS accounts and virtual private clouds (VPCs)—all with reduced management and operational complexity. In this blog post, learn two options for how to manage network security with third-party firewall appliances.

At AWS, our customers and partners serving government, nonprofit, healthcare, and education are focusing on advancing the way they deliver critical services, improve the customer experience, build resilience into how they operate, and respond to disruptive events. With much progress made to date and with customers expecting the same digital experience and service as in other industries, expectations are only getting higher. So how can public sector organizations approach this new dynamic, and how can AWS support their missions?

The recent Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy update contains important cloud computing language that aligns with the AWS approach to building CJIS compliant solutions. Learn more about the CJIS Security Policy changes and how AWS supports these new policies.

In September 2022, the State of Arizona Department of Homeland Security (AZDOHS) launched a new program to bolster the cybersecurity of Arizona’s most vulnerable cities, counties, and K12 school districts. The Arizona Statewide Cyber Readiness Grant Program enables local entities to reduce their cyberattack surface by accessing technical assistance and software licenses across five functional areas. The Cyber Grant Task Force selected two software providers from the AWS Marketplace hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Tanium and CrowdStrike to assist cities, counties, and schools with improving their cybersecurity posture.

State and local government organizations are experiencing an increase in cyber incidents that impact and disrupt citizen services. In 2021, US President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which created the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP) to provide funding to eligible entities to address cybersecurity risks and threats to information systems owned or operated by, or on behalf of, state, local, or tribal governments. This blog post guides you through some resources and approaches to consider as organizations strive to meet the SLCGP funding requirements.

Public sector organizations around the world share a common concern: how can they make sure their digital transformation maintains data security? The question comes up often when I meet with government leaders around the world in my role as a government transformation digital advisor at AWS. During my time in the UK Government’s Digital Service (GDS), and now in my work with government leaders, I’ve learned important lessons about transforming services securely in the cloud. Read on for some key takeaways.

Cybersecurity analytics is a systematic methodology designed to collect, ingest, process, aggregate, and analyze security events. This methodology empowers organizations to proactively perform security investigations, powered by advanced analytics and machine learning (ML), which help mitigate cyber issues more effectively and efficiently at scale. Learn about the core components of a cybersecurity analytics framework and how organizations can use AWS to design a cybersecurity analytics platform with analytics and ML services.

At Amazon, we believe cybersecurity skills training and workforce development are essential to addressing cybersecurity challenges. Leading into Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Amazon hosted Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), for a roundtable with leaders across higher education, state and local government, and private industry to discuss ways to develop the cybersecurity workforce through skills training, partnerships between government and industry, and creating pathways to cybersecurity careers. Learn more about how Amazon supports cybersecurity training.