Category: Defense

Ten years ago, the federal government was only just beginning to adopt cloud computing services. In the early days, there were concerns about how much cloud services would cost and whether they’d be secure enough for sensitive government data. In listening to our government customers, we heard their concerns about cost and security. They also needed to innovate ahead of demand, and required a highly secure and compliant infrastructure to do it. That’s why we launched AWS GovCloud (US) in 2011.

This week, AWS rolled out our 10-year economic impact study, highlighting how successful the partnership between Virginia and AWS has been for both. Since 2011, AWS has invested $35 billion into the state through our infrastructure investments. As both a Virginian and an Amazonian, I’m most proud of the civic programs and workforce development we’ve created with Virginia to enhance the lives of citizens with our presence. Terry Dickerson, a practice manager at AWS and U.S. Army veteran, is an illustration of the success we’ve realized with Amazon’s Veteran Technical Apprenticeship. Terry shares his story of how our partnership with the higher education system in Virginia has opened the door to his career.

Education, government, and nonprofit organizations seek to deliver quality services to support their missions in increasingly dynamic and complex environments, all while facing common challenges, such as shortage of systems to collect and analyze data in real-time. To support public sector organizations on their missions and with the growth of Internet of Things (IoT), Amazon Web Service (AWS) is launching the AWS IoT Rapid Adoption Assistance Initiative for AWS Partners.

To offer security conscious enterprises and government agencies the ability to implement important governance and security controls, AWS acquired Wickr in June of 2021. Wickr helps organizations protect their collaboration with a secure and compliant solution. Built with a security-first mindset, Wickr delivers advanced security features not available with traditional communications services.

AWS is launching the AWS Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Customer Responsibility Matrix (CRM). The AWS CMMC CRM reduces the level of effort required for CMMC compliance by providing customers a breakdown of the CMMC practices that they can inherit from AWS, and identifies CMMC practice roles and responsibilities when using the AWS Compliant Framework for Federal and DoD Workloads in AWS GovCloud (US).

The AWS Compliant Framework is an automated solution designed to help customers reduce the time to setup an environment for running secure and scalable workloads while implementing an initial security baseline that meets US federal government standards. The solution was designed to address the requirements for deploying DoD CMMC and DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide compliant environments.

For defense, speed is important—speed to capabilities, speed to delivery, and speed to service. To deliver at the pace required of the US Navy, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC PAC) leveraged the AWS Cloud to accelerate development of new features for the nation’s warfighters and to help address compliance at every stage of their cloud journey.

Predictive maintenance solutions involve using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and data analytics tools to monitor operations, detect anomalies, and predict possible defects or breakdowns in equipment before they happen. To help keep aircraft mission ready, the Air Force turned to PavCon, LLC, (PavCon), a woman-owned small business, to create an actionable predictive maintenance solution powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS recently participated in a technical demonstration, known as “On-Ramp 4,” to test edge computing capabilities for the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). ABMS is the Air Force’s contribution to the DoD’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) vision. Under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with ABMS, AWS tested the ability to successfully integrate and deploy a tactical edge node solution leveraging highly resilient network connectivity and communications.

In June 2019, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC PAC) awarded AWS the first Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) in the US DoD for DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide IL-6 cloud services. This BPA allows for Navy customers to bring the benefits of commercial cloud to Secret workloads. In 2020, NIWC PAC made available the first AWS Secret Region IL-6 environment available for both internal customers residing on the NIWC PAC Secret Wide Area Network (SWAN) and external DoD and U.S. Department of the Navy customers. To support external customers, NIWC PAC deployed SkyDesk, a Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution that allows any SIPRNet terminal to connect and access the NR&DE IL-6 Cloud.