New AWS workbook for New Zealand financial services customers

We are pleased to announce a new AWS workbook designed to help New Zealand financial services customers align with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) Guidance on Cyber Resilience.

The RBNZ Guidance on Cyber Resilience sets out the RBNZ expectations for its regulated entities regarding cyber resilience, and aims to raise awareness and promote the cyber resilience of the financial sector, especially at board and senior management level. The guidance applies to all entities regulated by the RBNZ, including registered banks, licensed non-bank deposit takers, licensed insurers, and designated financial market infrastructures.

While the RBNZ describes its guidance as “a set of recommendations rather than requirements” which are not legally enforceable, it also states that it expects regulated entities to “proactively consider how their current approach to cyber risk management lines up with the recommendations in [the] guidance and look for [opportunities] for improvement as early as possible.”

Security and compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. This differentiation of responsibility is commonly referred to as the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, in which AWS is responsible for security of the cloud, and the customer is responsible for their security in the cloud. The new AWS Reserve Bank of New Zealand Guidance on Cyber Resilience (RBNZ-GCR) Workbook helps customers align with the RBNZ Guidance on Cyber Resilience by providing control mappings for the following:

• Security in the cloud by mapping RBNZ Guidance on Cyber Resilience practices to the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Security of the cloud by mapping RBNZ Guidance on Cyber Resilience practices to control statements from the AWS Compliance Program.

The downloadable AWS RBNZ-GCR Workbook contains two embedded formats:

• Microsoft Excel – Coverage includes AWS responsibility control statements and Well-Architected Framework best practices.
• Dynamic HTML – Coverage is the same as in the Microsoft Excel format, with the added feature that the Well-Architected Framework best practices are mapped to AWS Config managed rules and Amazon GuardDuty findings, where available or applicable.

The AWS RBNZ-GCR Workbook is available for download in AWS Artifact, a self-service portal for on-demand access to AWS compliance reports. Sign in to AWS Artifact in the AWS Management Console, or learn more at Getting Started with AWS Artifact.

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