Category: government

US service members returning from active duty can face many challenges—including finding a new job or even a new career. To help veterans succeed, we’ve worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to make AWS Certification exams eligible for VA reimbursement.

Are you a US veteran? Find out more about AWS Certifications and how you can be reimbursed for AWS Certification exams on Jeff Barr’s original blog post here.

AWS Certifications recognize IT professionals with the technical expertise to design, deploy, and operate applications and infrastructure on AWS. Career transitions are never easy, but cloud IT presents one promising path forward—especially when industry surveys show that these skills remain in short supply.

Our hope is that easier access to our certification exam, combined with the unique talents veterans already possess, will open up more career possibilities for retired servicemen and servicewomen and help them achieve success in their post-military careers.

Learn more and find answers to common questions here.

To achieve full benefits of moving applications to the AWS platform, it is critical to design a cloud migration model that delivers optimal cost efficiency. This includes establishing a compelling business case, acquiring new skills within the IT organization, implementing new business processes, and defining the application migration methodology to transform your business model from a traditional on-premises computing platform to a cloud infrastructure.

A Practical Guide to Cloud Migration: Migrating Services to AWS white paper coauthored by AWS’s Blake Chism and Carina Veksler provides a high-level overview of the cloud migration process and is a great first read for customers who are thinking about cloud adoption.

The path to the cloud is a journey to business results. AWS has helped hundreds of customers, such as City of McKinney, TX and Georgetown University, achieve their business goals at every stage of their journey. While every organization’s path will be unique, there are common patterns, approaches, and best practices that can be implemented to streamline the process.

1. Define your approach to cloud computing from business case to strategy and change management to technology.
2. Build a solid foundation for your enterprise workloads on AWS by assessing and validating your application portfolio, and integrating your unique IT environment with solutions based on AWS cloud services.
3. Design and optimize your business applications to be cloud-aware, taking direct advantage of the benefits of AWS services.
4. Meet your internal and external compliance requirements by developing and implementing automated security policies and controls based on proven, validated designs.

Early planning, communication, and buy-in are essential. Understanding the forcing function (time, cost, and availability) is key and will be different for each organization. When defining the migration model, organizations must have a clear strategy, map out a realistic project timeline, and limit the number of variables and dependencies for transitioning on-premises applications to the cloud. Throughout the project, build momentum with key constituents with regular meetings to review progress and status of the migration project to keep people enthused, while also setting realistic expectations about the availability time frame.

Learn more about what it takes to migrate to the cloud in this guide here.

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new automated sign-up capability for AWS GovCloud (US).  The new self-service capability greatly reduces the time it takes for qualified customers to gain access to AWS GovCloud (US).  Note that automated sign-up is only available for direct AWS customers in the United States.

What is GovCloud?

Designed to meet the US Government’s regulatory and compliance requirements for sensitive workloads, AWS GovCloud (US) is an isolated AWS region with two fault tolerant and geographically separated Availability Zones.  AWS GovCloud (US) enables qualified customers to deploy sensitive workloads to the cloud in compliance with US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and other US government regulations.  AWS GovCloud (US) is available to US government agencies, government contractors, private and public commercial entities, educational institutions, non-profits, and research organizations that meet access requirements.

Since AWS GovCloud (US) is isolated from other AWS regions, it requires an account owner to have a separate account ID and user credentials for access. Accounts can only be obtained by individuals or entities that qualify as US Persons.

What is GovCloud Automated Sign-Up?

GovCloud Automated (Auto) Sign-Up gives AWS customers the ability to request access to GovCloud directly from their standard AWS account in a self-service manner. Customers are no longer required to submit information to AWS account teams to request access to GovCloud. Customers can log into their AWS account using root credentials, navigate to the “My Account” page (Billing Management Console), and select “Sign Up for AWS GovCloud (US)” to initiate their request for access to GovCloud. From there, customers can attest that they meet US Person/US entity eligibility requirements, read and sign the GovCloud Amendment, and submit their GovCloud access request. If approved, the customer will receive a confirmation email with follow-up directions to complete the access request, set an Administrator IAM user and password, and log in to the GovCloud Management Console.

We are always working to meet the needs of our customers and allow them to focus on their missions. Click here to get started with AWS GovCloud (US).

Government IT leaders are continually on the lookout for new ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Cloud computing provides access to numerous technologies while allowing agencies to save time and money, improve operations, and encourage innovation. That’s why for 2016, the Obama Administration budgeted about $7.3 billion so the federal government can further embrace this technology.

Check out the full infographic depicting the answers to the following questions:

• What drives adoption of cloud technology?
• How does the cloud reduce an agency’s footprint?
• How does the cloud look?
• What are cloud service levels?

A new way of architecting the cloud to improve the accessibility, speed, and security for U.S. government users

AWS is excited to announce that we’ve successfully completed the testing phase of the FedRAMP-Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) Overlay pilot program. We’ve been working with the FedRAMP Program Management Office (PMO), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) PMO, GSA 18F, and FedRAMP third-party assessment organization (3PAO), Veris Group, to develop and test a new way of architecting the cloud that would maintain a high level of security. This will ultimately provide U.S government agencies and contractors with information to assist in the development of “TIC Ready” architectures on AWS.

Background on TIC

In November 2007, the Office of Management & Business (OMB) mandated that government users could only access their cloud provider through an agency connection, either a TIC Access Provider (TICAP) or Managed Trusted IP Service Provider (MTIPS). This can cause a slow connection and additional constraints on a government network or infrastructure. In today’s “anytime, anywhere” world, it’s important for government users to access their data hosted on their cloud provider from any device.

In May 2015, the FedRAMP PMO and DHS PMO invited AWS to participate in the FedRAMP-TIC Overlay pilot to develop an approach that balances the need for speed and security, while also removing the frustrations and headaches caused by slow connectivity. The goal of the pilot was to help develop and test a new way of architecting that would maintain a high level of security – mapped to FedRAMP security controls – and still make the government user experience more accessible and user-friendly.   AWS Pilot Results

As an initial analysis, we leveraged a TIC-capabilities-to-FedRAMP-Moderate mapping table provided for the pilot.  Based on that, our 3PAO determined that 80% of the TIC capabilities were covered within AWS’s existing FedRAMP Agency ATO. During the course of the pilot, in collaboration with DHS and FedRAMP, 17 of the TIC capabilities were excluded from the pilot as either not relevant or not appropriate to a cloud service provider (CSP).  Of the remaining 57 controls, we determined that responsibilities would be allocated as follows: shared between AWS and the customer (36); solely the responsibility of the customer (16);  and solely the responsibility of AWS (5).  Through the pilot activities, we successfully worked with GSA 18F and our 3PAO to identify and demonstrate implementation of the required capabilities through a combination of native AWS services and the use of technologies available from the AWS Marketplace.

Take Advantage of TIC Connectivity on AWS Today

Our government customers interested in following GSA 18F’s lead now have the capability to deploy and test their own TIC capabilities on AWS. While the FedRAMP TIC Overlay is being finalized, our customers can implement the TIC capabilities as part of their virtual perimeter protection solution using the evidence resulting from our TIC Mobile assessment and functionality provided by AWS (with a clear definition of the customer responsibility for implementation of the additional TIC capabilities).

Check out our TIC readiness whitepaper, which provides an overview of the TIC pilot and its goals, guidance on how customers can implement TIC, as well as appendices that provide detailed mappings of customer responsibility for the TIC capabilities.

Congrats to the Team!

AWS answered the call of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Program Management Office (PMO) and FedRAMP PMO for CSPs to participate in their FedRAMP – TIC Overlay Pilots in order to help develop a solution towards data security and connections between federal agency mobile users and cloud service providers. AWS successfully completed the pilot and provided their assessment of addressing the controls identified in the Draft FedRAMP-TIC Overlay to DHS TIC and FedRAMP PMO to develop further guidance on a TIC Ready CSP solution.” –Matthew Goodrich, FedRAMP Director and Sara Mosley, TIC program manager at the Department of Homeland Security, Trusted Internet Connection

It’s been an absolute pleasure to work alongside the folks at the FedRAMP PMO, DHS, and GSA 18F during this pilot program. We are looking forward to working with our other government agency customers to help them leverage the cloud to better meet their mission!

At FedTalks late last year, one of the most significant thought leadership events in the federal market, Kyle Roche, General Manager of IoT at AWS spoke to the audience about the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the ever-expanding network of physical “things” that can connect to the Internet along with the information they transfer without requiring human interaction. “Things” in the IoT sense, refer to a wide variety of devices embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enable them to collect and exchange data over the Internet.

IoT has seen a lot of hype, but it is the technological innovation in this space that makes it interesting, such as smart fabrics that can signal an emergency, sensors powered by the heat generated from the human body, and trash cans that can order your groceries. These are just a few of the innovations in IoT, but we are living in a world where everything is becoming connected and connectivity is becoming widely available. With IoT’s popularity rising, companies are inventing new ways for devices to connect.

Within the public sector, IoT is being used for areas important to us all—water, transportation, public safety, city services, smart infrastructure, and health services, for instance. Sometimes IoT can seem so large that it’s hard to get a handle on it, but let’s consider IoT devices in terms of something we can relate to: the duties of being a citizen.

What does it mean to be a citizen?

Citizens are either born or raised, native or naturalized. Devices in essence can be considered either native or naturalized as well. They are either born with connectivity in mind or altered from their original state to become connected, which is what we are seeing today. Whether native or naturalized, as citizens we have a lot of duties, including the duty to:

1. Respect your fellow citizens;
2. Stay informed;
3. Defend the country if the need arises.

The connection between devices and citizens may seem like a stretch, but in the spirit of making connections, let’s walk through a few examples of how connected devices can respect others, stay informed, and defend the country if necessary.

1. Respect your fellow citizen

Just as it is our responsibility to respect the property and opinions of others, connected devices through sensors must be aware of other devices to mutually co-exist in peace. For example, a vehicle needs to know itself, it needs to know the intersection where it finds itself, the traffic lights it is facing, the flow of traffic, and the best route to get to its final destination. By sharing information, devices can accept and react to each other.  The cloud becomes a governing body on top of the connectivity. Cloud vendors, with an IoT platform, can resolve conflicts and take action across the board. The roles of society are shifting as more devices are created and becoming connected, and the cloud offers visibility into changing norms.

2. Stay informed

Being aware of your surroundings is just as key to being a good citizen as water is the key to life. There are 1.4 billion cubic km of water on Earth. If we can know more about how we use, consume, and waste water, we can become better citizens. IoT allows for smart irrigation systems that calculate the water patterns around the home, the angle of the yard, and then can tune sprinkler systems to save money. On a city-wide basis, IoT can measure the flow of pressure and can influence decisions on capital expenditures to get the biggest impact for optimizing our water.

3. Defend the country

If the need should arise, it is our duty to defend ourselves and our country. Similarly, IoT helps our first responders protect us. For example, there are devices deployed around cities to record sound and positioning so we can pinpoint a gunshot within 10 feet. Also, facial detection helps law enforcement and sensor and devices within the military to aid in full situational awareness.

Listen to Kyle’s full talk here.

Similar IoT trends are being adopted in both the private and public sectors, resulting in an inspiring array of possibilities.

AWS IoT can support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely. With AWS IoT, your applications can keep track of and communicate with all of your devices, all the time, even when they aren’t connected. Learn more about AWS IoT here.

Government agencies house countless bytes of critical data that are relevant to both the lives of citizens and issues of national security. Agencies rely on that data to carry out their missions, and are fully responsible for protecting the data.

While cybersecurity policy in the public sector previously relied on a siloed design, agencies are increasingly turning to cloud services to strengthen their security measures.

The AWS Cloud infrastructure is one of the most flexible and secure environments available today. It’s being used by multiple agencies—such as NASA, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency—as well as by numerous universities, companies and nonprofits.

For instance, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Dept. of Energy adopted cloud technology from AWS to build a secure, collaborative platform to collect, curate, store and share moderately sensitive data. “Security is paramount for us. The Department of Energy signed off on this cloud environment because they were comfortable with our security protocols,” said Chris Webber, senior cloud engineer at NREL.

“Using AWS, we worry less and spend less time and money on infrastructure. As a result, we can focus more of our attention on content and data quality and on making sure our renewable energy data is discoverable by researchers around the world,” Webber said.

Read the full Washington Post article here.

To kick off the New Year, the AWS Worldwide Public Sector team is excited about the announcement of our new region in the Republic of Korea and the preannouncement of the Canada region last week.

The AWS Cloud operates 32 Availability Zones within 12 geographic Regions around the world, with 11 more Availability Zones and 5 more Regions coming online throughout the next year in Canada, China, India, Ohio, and the United Kingdom (see the AWS Global Infrastructure page for more info).

The region-based AWS model has proven to be a good standard for our government, education, and nonprofit customers around the globe. Due to the unique needs of these public sector organizations, we understand that it is important to exercise complete control over where your data is stored and where it is processed.

Now, Korean-based developers and organizations, as well as multinational organizations with end users in Korea, can securely store and process their data in AWS in Korea with single-digit millisecond latency across most of Korea.

Governments, multi-national corporations, and international organizations are at significant crossroads, trying to balance innovation and security. They want the elasticity, scalability, and total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud computing, but they also must meet significant security requirements to protect data and personal privacy.

With the launch of the AWS Region on Korean soil, public sector organizations will now have the opportunity to move sensitive and mission-critical workloads to AWS.

The Seoul Region consists of two Availability Zones (AZs) at launch. Each AZ includes one or more geographically distinct datacenters, each with redundant power, networking, and connectivity. Each AZ is designed to be resilient to any issues in another AZ, enabling customers to operate production applications and databases that are more highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable than would be possible from a single datacenter.

Additionally, this investment in the Asia Pacific area will enable increased innovation and collaboration in education, nonprofits, scientific computing, and open data efforts.

Public sector customers will find the new AWS Region has services and features like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS Trusted Advisor that can enable secure information technology operations, whether they are managing health records, building out new digital services for citizens, or looking for new ways to collaborate with colleagues. Beyond these security services, public sector customers should also enjoy the elasticity and affordability of our compute, networking, storage, analytics, and database web services. To learn more about AWS Cloud Security, visit here.

Investing in the future of cloud

AWS is also delivering its AWS Educate Program to help promote cloud learning in the classroom with eight local universities, including Sogang University, Yonsei University, and Seoul National University. Since its launch locally in May 2015, over 1,000 Korean students have participated in AWS-related classes and nonprofit e-learning programs, such as “Like a Lion.”

With the launch of the Seoul Region, it marks the fifth AWS region in the Asia Pacific area, bringing the global total of regions to 12 (with more to come in 2016!).

For more details about this announcement, please see the official posting here.

On the topic of resilience—the ability to withstand, respond and adjust to chronic or acute stressors— there are a lot of data sets out there on social ecological systems, human environment, stressors, shocks, natural disasters, and conflict. The challenge is these data sets are often stored in silos or confined to the academic community.

However, if we could analyze existing data to give insights into what kind of investment and intervention countries should make, then more people could become resilient.

Resilience Atlas brings together 60 data sets for governments and scientists: 12TB of data now available

We had the opportunity to talk with Alex Zvoleff, Director of Data Science, and Sandy Andelman, Chief Scientist at Conservation International.

Conservation International, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, released a new online tool, the Resilience Atlas. The Atlas is designed to build understanding of the extent and severity of stresses and disasters affecting rural livelihoods, production systems, and ecosystems and how different types of assets, from natural capital, to financial capital and social networks affect their ability to thrive and even transform in the face of adversity.

For the first time, data from satellites, ground-based biophysical measurements and household surveys – from more than 60 of the best available data sets (including the NASA NEX data set) totaling over 12 terabytes – have been integrated, analyzed and made available in an easy-to-use map interface. By integrating these disparate data sets, the Atlas connects themes and perspectives so that people making important investment, development and security decisions can easily see the full picture.

What is the challenge you are trying to solve with the Resilience Atlas?

Sandy: In order to thrive, societies need to exhibit resilience. Evidence-based decision-making is a huge challenge in areas where data are inaccessible, and the Resilience Atlas hopes to help make essential information available in a digestible form to governments, communities, donors and businesses who are struggling to manage the risks and uncertainties associated with climate change, conflict, population growth, and other stressors.  It can provide them with insights on the magnitude of the challenge and on which kinds of interventions and investments will make a difference. By creating a system, instead of just providing the answers, people can reach their own insights with the publicly provided data.

How was the map created?

Alex: Faced with large amounts of data volume (12 TB) during work on the Atlas, we had to be able to handle the large volume, the intense computation, and be able to access the data on demand. Prior to considering the cloud to host the Atlas, a lot of the data sets were held by individual researchers. Though a few were made available in publications, they were not easy to access, not easy to crop or download, and in general a lot of the data was not publicly available or it needed specialized knowledge to decipher. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) spot instances were used for processing and bringing up a large fleet of servers at one time; 120 servers were used in parallel. Amazon EC2 made it possible to do in only a few days what would have taken over a month. Additionally, we have the ability to automate processes as more data sets covering different trends become of interest to the community. All of this is made possible by the cloud computing infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

How does the map impact human life?

Sandy: The hope is that this map provides insights to how extensive and how severe the different kinds of shocks people face are in more than forty countries in the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. For example, with increasing climate variability or financial market shocks, the atlas can give insights into the particular systems and then to try to shift decision making to a more evidence-based approach pulling together the best data to get the complete picture. By mining data, users can understand which kinds of interventions and investments have actual evidence for their effectiveness. Another example is the Journey tool. One focuses on Ethiopian pastoralists, guiding users first to a map showing where they live and then exploring stressors they face, such as changing rainfall patterns that threaten the viability of pastoralism as a livelihood and the lack of investments in human capital, such as literacy and access information, which can hinder them to adapt or transform.

What is the goal of the Atlas in relation to governments, communities, donors and businesses?

Sandy: We can work with governments to use the Atlas as a planning tool. Officials can use the data already in the atlas or they can work with us to put their finer-scale data into the Atlas as a tool to assess resilience and to inform better investment decisions. The open access to this data gives a better understanding of important issues like climate change, flooding, droughts to more people. What was missing before was the integrated picture and more and more in the world we live in today we need a system perspective, because decisions about poverty alleviation are not independent from decisions about conservation and what kind of agriculture to invest in. The Atlas is unique because it pulls together all the different data sets that people might be familiar individually with and puts them together to give the community the full picture to make their important decisions. Determining cause and effect is complex, hence why it requires multiple disciplines and experts to look at problems from multiple angles.

What is the user experience like with the Atlas?

Alex: With the “Journeys” feature, the Atlas guides users on how to tell stories with data, enabling users to explore the specific data that are relevant to the questions they want to answer. Instead of telling them the answers, the Atlas helps them to discover the answers for themselves. It has a simple three-step approach:

1. Select geography and system of interest to produce a map of how it is distributed.
2. Identify the stressors and shocks affecting system, and their extent and severity.
3. Explore what kinds of assets (such as natural, human, social, financial, and manufactured capital) might increase resilience.

Users can share their insights by sharing map links via social media or by embedding Atlas data within their own webpages. All of this data is openly available without a fee and the site supports API access for private industries, allowing a broader audience to work with the data to build other tools.

Go ahead and explore the map here.
AWS also provides public data sets, visit www.aws.amazon.com/opendata to learn more.

The year 1776 is celebrated in the United States as the official beginning of the country’s freedom, with the Declaration of Independence issued on July 4.

Taking this year as inspiration for its namesake, 1776 is a global incubator and seed fund helping startups transform industries that impact millions of lives every day— in the areas of education, energy and sustainability, health, transportation, and cities.

To encourage startups to envision innovative ideas, 1776 created the Challenge Cup for the most promising, startups to share their vision on a global stage.

What is the Challenge Cup?

Each year, 1776 hosts a worldwide tournament called the Challenge Cup. Together with partners and over 50 incubator hosts around the world, 1776 will discover the most promising, highly scalable startups that are poised to solve the major challenges of our time.

Startups advance through three rounds: Local, Regional and Global Finals. All of the regional winners and a host of wild cards will be invited to participate in the Challenge Cup Global Finals next June in Washington, D.C. They will compete for over $1 million in prizes, as well as spend time with the investors, customers, media and other key connections that can help them succeed on a global scale.

The power to change the world

From the spark of an idea to the first customer to IPO and beyond, the world’s most progressive startups build and grow their businesses on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

We believe entrepreneurs have the power to change the world, and we are excited to partner with 1776 and support others who are dedicating their entrepreneurial journey to the industries that matter most to our lives — education, energy, health, transportation, food, and more. Throughout the Challenge Cup, we will provide winners of the competitions with AWS credits that can be used on eligible cloud services to help them innovate using cloud technology.

We see major opportunities for tech entrepreneurship, particularly for new businesses that need to be enabled locally, from a technology perspective. At AWS, we are committed to improving tech education around the world and want to continue to fuel talent and trained resources. We need to create the right environment for mentorship, between individuals and between businesses. Together, we can bring the right tools, technology, and training to reinvent the business ecosystem with cloud computing technology that allows for economic growth and world-changing outcomes.

We agree with 1776 that the Challenge Cup is much more than a competition — it’s a movement of startups bringing world-changing ideas to life. By working together, we can unleash the creative power of collaboration and technology.

“Our partners are part of this global convening of entrepreneurs and are an integral part of the Challenge Cup. By making it possible for startups to build solutions with minimal capital costs, Amazon Web Service has been a powerful catalyst to the explosion in startup activity around the world. AWS is committed to supporting startups that are impacting essential human needs and we are thrilled to have them be a part of this year’s tournament as one of our global partners,” Evan Burfield, 1776 co-founder said.

From D.C. to Nairobi to Singapore, we can’t wait to see what ideas these startups from around the world will be bring to the competition. Follow the action at #1776Challenge. Looking to attend an event? Register here.