Amazon Web Services Set to Earn FISMA Accreditation

Amazon Web Services announced today that it has received Federal Information Security Management Act (known as FISMA) Moderate Authorization and Accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration.

FISMA is a US federal law that was enacted in 2002 recognizing the importance of information security to the economic and national security interests of the United States. The act requires federal agencies to develop, document, and implement an information security system for its data and infrastructure. FISMA is the fifth major certification or accreditation Amazon has received for its Web Services business featuring the Elastic Compute Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platform.

FISMA Moderate Authorization and Accreditation requires AWS to implement and operate an extensive set of security configurations and controls. U.S. federal, state, local and tribal agencies can now utilize Amazon Web Services at the FISMA Moderate level via the U.S. General Services Administration’s Blanket Purchase Agreement.

Teresa Carlson, Vice President of Global Public Sector, Amazon Web Services said “Amazon Web Services offers government agencies access to scalable, cost-effective and flexible technology infrastructure that empowers agencies to quickly and securely deploy their applications in the cloud. More than 100 government organizations such as Recovery.gov, the Department of Treasury’s Treasury.gov, the Federal Register 2.0 at the National Archives, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at USDA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA are already using AWS to meet their needs for agile, reliable and highly available computing environments. We look forward to continue working with the U.S. government to help reduce costs and shorten the time to accomplishing their mission.”

Stephen Schmidt, Chief Information Security Officer, Amazon Web Services said “Security remains our top priority, and we continue to pursue certifications that provide our customers with the resources they need to confidently and securely deploy mission-critical applications in the AWS cloud. By meeting the Federal government’s requirements for FISMA Moderate, agencies can rapidly expand their cloud computing footprint, deploying sensitive government data and applications on AWS while continuing to comply with the government’s unique and rigorous security requirements.”

For more information, view Amazon’s announcement.

 

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