Category: Public Sector Partners

According to the 2020 Deloitte-NASCIO Cybersecurity Study for state governments, 54 percent of states are not confident in their ability to protect emerging technology. Traditional cybersecurity approaches can result in singularly focused solutions that don’t provide holistic protection. It can also inhibit an organizations’ ability to monitor and respond to security threats in real time. As more organizations shift to cloud-based workloads, security mechanisms and components need to be developed and integrated using a Security by Design (SbD) approach. Our AWS Partners have developed pre-configured security solutions, which allow customers to deploy applications using SbD strategies and also use AWS security solutions to ensure continuous security alignment. 

To help our public sector customers in Sweden accelerate their journey to the cloud, we are launching the AWS ClearStart program. AWS ClearStart helps organizations meet security and regulatory needs through a set of guides, trainings, technology tools, and cloud computing experts to simplify the process of complying with Swedish and EU regulations, including the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act (OSL) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as with international information security standards, such as ISO/IEC27001.

Monitoring and tracking student and staff exposure to COVID-19 and reports of those experiencing known symptoms continues to be a critical part of school plans for remaining open this fall. Colleges and universities are creating and using mobile applications that can track users’ symptoms, record COVID-19 test results, get connected to medical resources, and help with contact tracing. Some of these mobile apps built by the university or an AWS Partner use the cloud to securely handle this vital information.

Governments at all levels rapidly addressed the rising challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian governments  met citizens’ needs quickly by building secure, compliant solutions on AWS to deliver critical information and services. Working with partners and AWS, Canadian governments and agencies released multiple solutions for providing a modern, digital-first experience for all to interact with the government and receive the information and services they need.

Organizations face a host of threats to business continuity, from extreme weather events to cyber-attacks to human error. Many turn to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to house their workloads in an environment that can withstand disruptions of any type or scale. IT resilience hinges on developing strong architectural, technological, and operational management. Cloud environments require assembly, execution, and maintenance. Here are five best practices for organizations to build IT resilience.

We’re in the midst of the information age and the Internet of Things (IoT) is at the center. What is IoT? It describes the billions of devices around the world that are connected to the internet, devices that can capture and analyze data and then perform an action based on that analysis. Whether it is an emerging IoT device, an innovative solution pivot, or a tried-and-true IoT application, a few things remain constant: we can look to leading examples from smart cities and healthcare to understand current and future uses and securely deploying and managing devices is an absolute must.

Now more than ever, governments, education institutions, healthcare organizations, and nonprofits globally look to modernize IT to operate more effectively and meet their missions. Cloud technologies are being used to power machine learning and data analytics for quicker insights to advance medicine and science, manage data at scale, and build a resilient workforce and foster a culture of innovation. To help and inspire organizations to use the cloud to accelerate modernization and digital transformation, AWS will hold the AWS Public Sector Summit Online on October 20, 2020.

Government agencies and public sector organizations need rapidly deployable and dependable security solutions to support their missions. In response to this need, AWS launched the Security Solutions for Government Workloads initiative under the Authority to Operate (ATO) on AWS Program. This initiative works with AWS Public Sector Partners, members of the AWS Partner Network (APN), to develop security solutions designed to meet the unique security and compliance requirements of public sector workloads.

From speeding the time to science to accelerating the delivery of critical citizen services, our customers are migrating to the AWS Cloud to successfully deliver on their missions. Our current environment has pushed us all into new ways of learning, working, and even socializing. And the cloud has made these recent changes and innovations possible. These customer examples can offer a playbook and inspiration for how organizations can leverage the cloud to innovate quickly and deliver on behalf of citizens.

As schools return for their academic years amid a global pandemic, many questions persist around how best to enable both teachers and students to learn remotely, including accessing materials and applications in a secure and suitable form. Similarly, staff and administrators must have a reliable system for handling confidential information. For some, the answer is found in VPN connectivity and VDI. Streaming applications over the internet instead of having them physically installed on devices and desktops can save costs and address security concerns. InterVision, AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner, helped one of their higher education customers quickly and securely scale remote application delivery to students and faculty using Amazon AppStream 2.0, a solution that provides highly available remote user access while reducing the management time and costs compared to traditional solutions.