Category: Federal

In July 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released a cloud native access point (CNAP) reference design that follows zero trust architecture (ZTA) principles and provides a new approach to access mission owner (MO) applications. The DoD’s reference design discusses four core capabilities of CNAP: authenticated and authorized entities (C1), authorized ingress (C2), authorized egress (C3), and security monitoring and compliance enforcement (C4). In this blog post, we walk through how to establish the C2 component via a virtual internet access point (vIAP) with AWS. The proposed architectures can reduce operational cost and management overhead, while improving the accessibility, resiliency, and security of mission owner applications.

The end of the US federal government fiscal year is fast approaching. With budget left to spend before September 30, agencies need to obligate their remaining 2022 fiscal year funds. AWS can provide federal agencies with options to procure future cloud computing resources using current-year funds. Learn more about efficient purchasing recommendations to meet your agency’s needs.

Since signing a framework agreement with the Government of Canada (GC) in 2019, AWS has developed an open source solution to automate the deployment of security controls for GC customers, which can reduce the time it takes to achieve an Authority to Operate (ATO). Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) used this solution to implement their cloud landing zone controls aligned with the Protected B, Medium Integrity, Medium Availability (PBMM) profile. They worked with AWS Partner Kainos to complete an ATO evidence package in only 60 days—a process that typically takes 18 months.

Customer experience (CX) has emerged as a key priority in the US following the 2021 Biden Administration Executive Order (EO) to transform federal customer experience and service delivery. Application modernization enables agencies to simplify business processes and provide customers with flexible, interactive, and simple to use applications, resulting in improved CX. In this blog post, we present an AWS architecture framework that agencies can use to develop and deploy a modern application that helps improve CX.

To mitigate synthetic fraud, government agencies should consider complementing their rules-based improper payment detection systems with machine learning (ML) techniques. By using ML on a large number of disparate but related data sources, including social media, agencies can formulate a more comprehensive risk score for each individual or transaction to help investigators identify improper payments efficiently. In this blog post, we provide a foundational reference architecture for an ML-powered improper payment detection solution using AWS ML services.

Recently, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a new funding opportunity for any principal investigator (PI) with an active award from the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), for use of cloud services and technologies via CloudBank. PIs can submit requests for use of the AWS Cloud, on a rolling basis, with funding made available for the duration of one year. This is a first-of-its-kind opportunity for federally-funded researchers to explore the capabilities of the AWS Cloud, at no additional cost.

Increasingly, AWS customers are operating workloads both in AWS GovCloud (US) and standard AWS Regions. Dependencies between workloads, changing data controls, or enrichment of data across multiple data levels are examples of business needs that may require moving data in and out of AWS GovCloud (US). In this blog post, I explain how to move data between Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets in the AWS GovCloud (US) and standard partitions.

As public sector customers find increasing need to move data between the AWS GovCloud (US) partition and the standard partition, they need tools to help them lower their operational burden. In this blog post, I walk through how to use AWS DataSync to move data on network file system (NFS) shares between the two partitions.

This year, to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the Biden administration committed to making free COVID-19 test kits available to U.S. households through covidtests.gov. AWS is honored to support this initiative by working with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to make sure the website for test kit ordering meets nationwide demand.

The Uniformed Services University Health System (USUHS) is the nation’s federal health professions academy, offering a curriculum and educational experience that emphasizes military healthcare, leadership, readiness, and public health. Each year, USUHS holds a training exercise called Operation Gunpowder to help prepare third-year medical students for varying field-care challenges they may encounter during their service. Over the course of the eight weeks prior to the training exercise, AWS collaborated with Deloitte to deliver ancillary system and operational medicine telemedicine best practice training to the participating students. “This is the first time telemed has truly delivered,” reported attending experts in special operations medicine.