SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced AWS GovCloud (U.S.) 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. With this distinction, AWS has demonstrated it can meet the extensive FedRAMP security requirements and as a result, an even wider range of government customers can leverage AWS’s secure environment to store, process, and protect a diverse array of sensitive government data. Leveraging the HHS authorization, all U.S. government agencies now have the information they need to evaluate AWS for their applications and workloads, provide their own authorizations to use AWS, and transition workloads into the AWS environment. To learn more about the AWS and FedRAMP compliance, please visit http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/.
“More than 300 U.S. government agencies already use the wide array of AWS services to be more innovative, agile, and cost-efficient,” said Teresa Carlson, 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. 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.”
“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.
The Agency granting the ATO and filing with the FedRAMP repository is HHS. “HHS's authorization of Amazon's cloud services using FedRAMP requirements ensures the security of government data and paves the way for other agencies in using secure cloud services,” said Matthew Goodrich, FedRAMP Program Manager. “Amazon and HHS have demonstrated that cloud providers can meet the FedRAMP requirements in addition to the provisional authorizations granted by the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board. Other agencies can leverage this authorization, potentially saving the Federal government hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating redundant security authorizations of Amazon's environment.”
“HHS worked closely with the FedRAMP program office and AWS to achieve FedRAMP compliance. Utilizing the FedRAMP templates, HHS was able to maintain security requirements while achieving economies of scale,” said Kevin Charest, HHS Chief Information Security Officer. “FedRAMP promoted the trust, transparency, collaboration, and commitment necessary between cloud service providers and Federal agencies to comply with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA). HHS is pleased to be one of the first Federal agencies to go through the FedRAMP process, and to issue an Agency FedRAMP ATO. Our collaborative approach allowed all of HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVS) to leverage that ATO and thereby reduce duplicative efforts, inconsistencies, and cost inefficiencies associated with current security authorization processes.”
With today’s announcement, all agencies have an efficient way to run their FedRAMP required workloads on AWS. Agencies can immediately 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.
About Amazon Web Services
Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services, Inc. began exposing key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services -- now widely known as cloud computing. The ultimate benefit of cloud computing, and AWS, is the ability to leverage a new business model and turn capital infrastructure expenses into variable costs. Businesses no longer need to plan and procure servers and other IT resources weeks or months in advance. Using AWS, businesses can take advantage of Amazon's expertise and economies of scale to access resources when their business needs them, delivering results faster and at a lower cost. Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of enterprise, government and startup customers businesses in 190 countries around the world. Amazon Web Services offers over 30 different services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). AWS services are available to customers from data center locations in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Australia.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services, Inc. provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle Paperwhite is the most-advanced e-reader ever constructed with 62% more pixels and 25% increased contrast, a patented built-in front light for reading in all lighting conditions, extra-long battery life, and a thin and light design. The new latest generation Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, now features new, improved fonts and faster page turns. Kindle Fire HD features a stunning custom high-definition display, exclusive Dolby audio with dual stereo speakers, high-end, laptop-grade Wi-Fi with dual-band support, dual-antennas and MIMO for faster streaming and downloads, enough storage for HD content, and the latest generation processor and graphics engine—and it is available in two display sizes—7” and 8.9”. The large-screen Kindle Fire HD is also available with 4G wireless, and comes with a groundbreaking $49.99 introductory 4G LTE data package. The all-new Kindle Fire features a 20% faster processor, 40% faster performance, twice the memory, and longer battery life.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.es and www.amazon.com.br. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment and data center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.
