AWS Public Sector Blog

DoD Cloud Infrastructure as Code for AWS is now available

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is committed to supporting the mission of our Department of Defense (DoD) customers by providing innovative, efficient, and effective solutions. In support of this commitment, we are announcing the availability of DoD Cloud Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for AWS – a baseline that uses a collection of templates to enable defense mission owners to quickly build out secure, scalable cloud environments. DoD Cloud IaC for AWS is designed to help DoD organizations accelerate cloud adoption and support the rapid delivery of capabilities to the warfighter.

Today, adoption of cloud services in the DoD requires time and resources that may not be readily available due to current mission demands and operational tempo (OPTEMPO). Infrastructure as code (IaC) is a DevOps concept that leverages automation to build out a foundational cloud environment that is ready to be customized to mission-specific requirements, significantly reducing the upfront investment that can slow the adoption of cloud capabilities. DoD Cloud IaC for AWS baseline helps further accelerate the DoD’s cloud adoption by its use of templates that are pre-configured and pre-authorized by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to provide DoD mission owners a secure, approved starting point for their cloud environments.

DoD Cloud IaC for AWS recently received a three-year Authority to Operate (ATO) with conditions from DISA’s Risk Management Executive. The ATO with conditions reduces the assessment and authorization burden for mission owners, to include the inheritance of 103 common controls and 295 control correlation identifiers (CCI) in the Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Services (eMASS) system.

DoD Cloud IaC for AWS also makes it simpler for mission owners to make sure the cloud environment is secure and compliant. DoD Cloud IaC for AWS creates tailored environments with embedded preventative and detective controls that comply with NIST 800-53 and the DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (CC SRG), and provides automated environment assessment and reporting. After deployment, mission owners can have a compliant and secure environment that can be used to deploy mission systems, build software applications, and migrate data.

Recently, the DoD Environment, Safety and Occupational Health Network and Information Exchange (DENIX) was able to accelerate their digital transformation through timely, cost-effective, and secure cloud deployment facilitated by DoD Cloud IaC for AWS.

“The DENIX program sees DoD Cloud Infrastructure as Code for AWS as a digital transformation accelerator,” said Poppy Harrover, program manager at DENIX. “By adopting the preapproved baseline, we reduce our deployment timelines, stay within budget, enhance cybersecurity, and expedite the ATO authorization process. DOD IaC helps transform DENIX into customer focused platform service that enables capabilities delivery at the speed of relevance at the least possible cost.”

Through the use of its pre-configured, pre-authorized templates, DoD Cloud IaC for AWS supports rapid delivery of innovative cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) technologies and capabilities to the warfighter.

Beyond the foundational environment deployments, DoD Cloud IaC for AWS includes a set of DISA-authorized, pre-configured offerings available through the AWS Service Catalog. These services decrease time to operational capability for a wide array of use cases and accelerate mission owners’ deployment of a tailored cloud environment.

DoD Cloud IaC for AWS also provides customers the opportunity to move up the stack and leverage higher level native AWS Managed Services, which increases the number of controls inherited from the cloud services provider.

Learn more details about DoD Cloud for IaC. Visit the DISA Hosting and Compute Center’s (HaCC) webpage to learn more about this baseline and get started.

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