Category: Best Practices

The recent Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy update contains important cloud computing language that aligns with the AWS approach to building CJIS compliant solutions. Learn more about the CJIS Security Policy changes and how AWS supports these new policies.

In June 2022, AWS Partner Coursera launched the annual Global Skills Report, an in-depth look at the state of skills globally. The Global Skills Report draws data from 100 million learners in more than 100 countries who have used Coursera, a global online learning platform, to develop a new skill during the past year. Building on the findings from the Global Skills Report, the following are four skills trends that workforce development leaders, like those in state and local government and education, should keep in mind as they strive to build an inclusive and competitive workforce.

How can public sector organizations help address the cloud skills gap? To discuss this, AWS recently hosted a webinar with a panel of government officials and workforce planning experts. These experts shared their success stories and offered best practices to state and local agencies looking to develop their own workforce strategies to build a robust pipeline of cloud talent. Read on for the top takeaways from the webinar.

Virtually all federal, state, and local government agencies are subject to various data retention and records management policies, regulations, and laws. AWS Wickr provides federal agencies with an innovative solution that can help them build public trust by protecting sensitive communications, while supporting the capture and management of records.  

State and local government organizations are experiencing an increase in cyber incidents that impact and disrupt citizen services. In 2021, US President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which created the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP) to provide funding to eligible entities to address cybersecurity risks and threats to information systems owned or operated by, or on behalf of, state, local, or tribal governments. This blog post guides you through some resources and approaches to consider as organizations strive to meet the SLCGP funding requirements.

The US Office of Management and Budget published M-21-31, a memorandum for federal government agencies to define event logging requirements related to cybersecurity incidents. These guidelines aim to support the detection, investigation, and remediation of cyber incidents on federal information systems. The memorandum defines various event logging (EL) tiers and the log data that must be captured for various log categories. Learn the services from AWS that have been called out explicitly in the memorandum for logging and retention requirements at the EL1 level, and the resources you can use to set up these services to capture the required log data.

Application modernization helps public sector customers innovate faster with resilient, highly available, and scalable applications. Serverless and containers services support customers in accelerating time to market and migrating existing applications to AWS, and they can decrease an organization’s total cost of ownership (TCO). In this blog post, learn how public sector customers use AWS serverless and containers technology to modernize their applications.

Public sector organizations around the world share a common concern: how can they make sure their digital transformation maintains data security? The question comes up often when I meet with government leaders around the world in my role as a government transformation digital advisor at AWS. During my time in the UK Government’s Digital Service (GDS), and now in my work with government leaders, I’ve learned important lessons about transforming services securely in the cloud. Read on for some key takeaways.

Cybersecurity analytics is a systematic methodology designed to collect, ingest, process, aggregate, and analyze security events. This methodology empowers organizations to proactively perform security investigations, powered by advanced analytics and machine learning (ML), which help mitigate cyber issues more effectively and efficiently at scale. Learn about the core components of a cybersecurity analytics framework and how organizations can use AWS to design a cybersecurity analytics platform with analytics and ML services.

AWS recently announced the global launch of the AWS Smart City Competency Program. Today, as governments and city leaders look to shape cities of the future, they are actively looking to meet citizen needs for smarter and more innovative urban services. The new AWS Smart City Competency Program will deliver proven partner recommendations to AWS customers and partner community to help them build and deploy innovative smart city solutions. As cities explore ways to digitally transform, there are a few key things to consider.