The U.S. government has approved Amazon (AMZN -1.64%) Web Services remote computing services as safe and suitable for federal use.
Specifically, AWS GovCloud and all U.S. AWS regions received an Agency Authority to Operate (ATO) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Amazon announced today. In doing so, AWS demonstrated that it could meet the requirements of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a U.S. government-wide program that standardizes security assessment, authorization, and monitoring for cloud products and services. With the ATO in hand, AWS can now work with many more government agencies.
In the company's press release, FedRAMP Program Manager Matthew Goodrich is quoted as saying:
HHS's authorization of Amazon's cloud services ... paves the way for other agencies in using secure cloud services. Amazon and HHS have demonstrated that cloud providers can meet the FedRAMP requirements ... Other agencies can leverage this authorization, potentially saving the Federal government hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating redundant security authorizations of Amazon's environment.
More than 300 U.S. government agencies use AWS, according to Amazon, including the Navy, the Treasury, and NASA.
