{"id":659170,"date":"2013-05-21T00:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T04:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=647378"},"modified":"2013-05-21T00:00:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T04:00:49","slug":"fedramp-seal-of-approval-clears-amazon-for-more-government-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/659170","title":{"rendered":"FedRAMP seal of approval clears Amazon for more government work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon Web Services can now claim a rare blessing among cloud providers: it has earned the FedRAMP accreditation<\/a> that certifies that it has met a variety of security standards. That certification, which covers AWS GovCloud as well as Amazon\u2019s other U.S. regions, should make it easier for state, local and government agencies to put workloads on Amazon\u2019s public cloud infrastructure without having to jump through so many hoops.<\/p>\n

\"Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon Web Services VP Adam Selipsky.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

FedRAMP, which stands for the\u00a0Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, \u201cis a U.S. government-wide standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and monitoring,\u201d said Adam Selipsky, VP of AWS.\u00a0If a service gets certified by FedRAMP for use by one agency, it will be easier for other government organizations to adopt it as well, he said.<\/p>\n

In government parlance, Amazon now has a three-year \u201cAuthority to Operate,\u201d or ATO. That certifies that a range of government data can be stored or processed on Amazon infrastructure. Companies seeking FedRAMP certification typically work with a sponsor agency, which in Amazon\u2019s case was the Department of Health and Human Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n

HHS has used AWS to run for the Centers of Disease Control\u2019s BioSense program <\/a>for tracking health problems in the U.S. and for the National Database for Autism Research.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

FedRAMP blessing greases the skids for more government use<\/h2>\n

AWS now has both a FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) Moderate<\/a> and a FedRAMP Moderate ranking.The latter designation means that\u00a0\u201dsensitive data\u201d can be stored and managed on AWS infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a journey, a sliding scale. Sensitive data is a term of art used in government. Even more top secret categories of data require additional certifications,\u201d Selipsky said.<\/p>\n

To date, exactly one cloud provider \u2014 Autonomic Resources<\/a>, a small North Carolina company \u2014 had earned the FedRAMP seal of approval from the General Services Administration. Now AWS is in the mix, but the two companies won\u2019t have the arena to themselves for very long. Up to 15 providers are expected to clear FedRAMP hurdles this year with double that number expected to do so in 2014 when FedRAMP certification becomes mandatory, according to\u00a0Federal Computer Week<\/em><\/a>,<\/p>\n

AWS is the kingpin in public cloud infrastructure where it\u2019s had a 6 year head start. But now enterprise-focused rivals \u2014 VMware will announce its AWS response on Tuesday,<\/a> HP and Rackspace have rolled out their own\u00a0public clouds. An early FedRAMP certification which should make government IT types feel better about deploying work on AWS, may well be another early-mover advantage.<\/p>\n

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels may well talk about the importance of public sector workloads when he speaks at GigaOM Structure <\/a>next month in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

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