Amazon Wins Cloud Security Clearance from US Government

With emerging technologies and tightening budgets, the cloud is quickly gaining traction in the public sector as a savvy IT approach. Public cloud giant Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) is now in a position to take advantage of this trend by gaining security clearance from the U.S. government that will make it easier for federal agencies to use its cloud computing services.

AWS GovCloud and all U.S. AWS regions have received an “Agency Authority to Operate” (ATO) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) requirements at the “moderate impact level.”

FedRAMP is a U.S. government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. More than 300 U.S. government agencies already use a wide array of AWS services, according to Teresa Carlson (News - Alert), AWS vice president of worldwide public sector.

“Today most government computing systems require built-to-order platforms and applications to meet government security and compliance requirements, which involve time-consuming and costly evaluations,” Carlson said in a statement. “With this FedRAMP compliance, agencies can now utilize a streamlined process from AWS when moving applications to the cloud to meet their unique business and mission requirements.”

Agencies can request access to the AWS FedRAMP package by submitting a FedRAMP Package Access Request Form and begin moving through the authorization process to achieve an ATO using AWS.

“The FedRAMP requirements raise the security bar for the agencies, results in uniform evaluations, and will provide government entities with immediate benefits of using the AWS Cloud,” said Stephen Schmidt, AWS chief information security officer.

Amazon, Google, IBM (News - Alert), Microsoft and Salesforce.com dominate the global government cloud computing market, which is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.2 percent through 2016, according to a recent TechNavio study.

TechNavio analysts said growth in this sector is attributed to the need for reducing total cost of ownership, but security concerns could hold back development in this market.