Amazon wins key cloud security clearance from US Govt

May 21, 2013 Leave a comment

Published: Tuesday May 21, 2013 MYT 1:55:00 PM

Amazon wins key cloud security clearance from US Govt

SAN FRANCISCO: Amazon.com Inc has been given a security clearance by the U.S. government that will make it easier for federal agencies to use its cloud computing services.

Amazon Web Services, known as AWS, was certified to operate as a cloud service provider for three years under the government’s new FedRAMP program. The accreditation covers all AWS data centers in the United States, the company said on Tuesday.

“This will cut the cost and time for agencies to deploy our systems,” saidTeresa Carlson, vice president of Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. “It cuts costs for AWS too.”

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has moved aggressively into the business of renting remote computing, storage and other IT services in recent years through AWS. The business has been a hit with startups, but the company is now going after big corporations and government agencies, a much larger opportunity. However, these organizations are more demanding, especially on issues like security and regulatory compliance.Last year, the U.S. government launched FedRAMP to standardize and streamline security assessments of cloud services. Before this program, if a vendor wanted to sell IT services to a government agency it had to obtain authorization for each separate project, slowing down the process and making it more expensive.

Under FedRAMP, AWS will be able to get approved for a government agency once and then its services can be used many times on multiple projects by that agency.

AWS said it received its three-year clearance through the Department of Health and Human Services. The certification covers this agency and all its operational divisions which include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health – Reuters

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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