In late January, AWS announced that it had been awarded the ability to host government workloads classified at the Protected level DLM in the Sydney AWS region The certification applies to 42 AWS services (46 if you include the different RDS database engines!). The official announcement is on the AWS Security blog.
AWS haven’t had to make any changes to meet the requirements. There are no extra charges or specific configuration changes required to make use of the services for protected workloads . If you are using a combination of the 42 services then you will now be able to build applications for highly sensitive workloads on AWS. The services covered include all the foundational services such as EC2, RDS, Lambda, S3, KMS and CloudTrail.
But wait, there’s more! Yes, you can host protected workloads in the Sydney region. However, you can also run unclassified workloads in any region globally.
You can find the details of certification through AWS Artefact. Here you will also find an AWS IRAP protected reference architecture. This will help you make sure that you configure the solution in line with the guidance and recommendations of ASD.
Re-gaining ground for protected workloads
It’s huge new for AWS. A subset of services running in Microsoft Azure and Office 365 has been certified since mid 2018. That competitive advantage had been significant for Microsoft but as of today it no longer applies. Through a quirk of the alphabet, AWS even appears at the top of the ASD Certified Cloud Service List for protected workloads!
The Australia government has long been a user of AWS for non-protected workloads. Key applications running on AWS today include the ATO portal and the Australian Electoral Commission. Now protected workloads can be added to the list too!
Today is the day
Are you working for a government agency and manage protected workloads? If so, today is the day to start thinking about how you migrate to the AWS Cloud. As a result, you too can now gain from its infinite scale and broad range of services whilst increasing your security posture.
