Three AWS services get FedRAMP High approval

When the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program released the FedRAMP high-security baseline last June, Amazon Web Services' GovCloud was among the first platforms approved. And on Jan. 5, the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board issues provisional authorities to operate for three additional services in the AWS GovCloud. 

The Amazon Relational Database Service can help agencies manage MySQL, Oracle and Postgres databases in the cloud. Amazon CloudWatch Logs can be used to monitor various system and application logs for problems, patterns or specific phrases. And AWS CloudTrail, according to the company, "is a web service that records AWS API calls for accounts and delivers log files to the user."

According to the FedRAMP website, the General Services Administration is the only agency so far to take advantage of the AWS GovCloud High authorization, but

Teresa Carlson, AWS's vice president for public sector worldwide, voiced confidence that more high-baseline cloud deployments are coming.

"We are constantly listening to our customers and work to deliver more services to help accelerate their missions," she said in announcing the approvals. "We are thrilled to offer these three new services that meet the FedRAMP High baseline."

The high baseline allows cloud service providers to handle and store data that, if compromised, could severely hurt organizational operations, assets or people in the federal agency that hired the provider. FedRAMP Director Matt Goodrich said when the baseline was finalized that FedRAMP High was needed for roughly half of the federal government's IT systems to be able to move to the cloud.

Microsoft's Azure Government platform and Global Foundation Services for Government Offering, and Autonomic Resources' ARC-P infrastructure-as-a-service offering also have earned FedRAMP High ATOs, and are being used by multiple agencies.