Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud services include: EC2, Auto Scaling, VPC, Lambda, Elastic Load Balancing, Elastic Map Reduce (EMR), S3, Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Glacier, CloudFront, RDS , DynamoDB, Redshift, Route 53 (DNS), Identity Management (IAM), Audit (CloudTrail), KMS, Cloudwatch, Analytics, Trusted Advisor, ECS, WAF, EFS, IoT, API Gateway
Features
- Elastic Compute on demand
- Preconfigured templates for your instances via AMIs
- Numerous configurations of CPU, memory, storage and networking capability
- Persistent storage for your data using Amazon EBS
- Multiple physical locations for your resources
- Secure Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) environments with VPN
- Secure access via Security Groups
- Object, Block and SAN Storage
- NoSQL and Relational Database as a Service
- Data Warehouse as a Service
Benefits
- Pay only for capacity you actually use
- Elastic computing. Scale up and down as needed
- Secure and reliable environment
- Comprehensive, cross service API audit logging and security (CloudTrail)
Pricing
£0.01 a unit
- Free trial available
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 10
Service ID
4 5 4 2 8 1 4 6 7 6 4 6 1 8 9
Contact
The Server Labs Ltd.
Dolores Saiz
Telephone: 07914163683
Email: sales@theserverlabs.com
Service scope
- Service constraints
- N/A
- System requirements
- N/A
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
-
Critical: 24x7x365 Response time <= 30 mins Resolution time <= 2 h
High:24x7x365 Response time <=60 mins Resolution time <= 4 h
Medium: Office Hours Response time <= 8 h Resolution time: <= 24 h
Low: Office Hours Response time <= 24 h Resolution time <= 48 h - User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- Yes
- Online ticketing support accessibility
- None or don’t know
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support
- Yes, at an extra cost
- Web chat support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web chat support is accessible
- Skype or Google hangout
- Web chat accessibility testing
- N/A
- Onsite support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support levels
-
We offer support in either 24x7 and 9x5 modes.
Cost varies by the amount of services deployed
The service has a preventative component, with periodic maintenance, monthly reporting and continuous improvement of the infrastructure, and a corrective component, when problems occur in the system covered by this support contract.
Once an issue has been received by The Server Labs, the procedure takes the following steps.
• Verification of the issue and escalation to second level support.
• Communication to customer of the solution to be undertaken.
• Restoration of any service lost working with the DBA and or engineer assigned to the project.
• Restoration of any data lost working with the DBA assigned to the project.
• Update of the system documentation if necessary.
• Closeout of the issue with description of actions undertaken. - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
- AWS provides a range of resources to help customers get started on our services. These include: comprehensive documentation (in multiple formats), introductory videos, hands-on labs, online and in-person training, access to a large ecosystem of partners and support from the public sector account team.
- Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
-
- HTML
- Other
- Other documentation formats
- Kindle
- End-of-contract data extraction
- Data may be copied out using OS-level tools (such as xopy, scp, ftp or rsync).
- End-of-contract process
-
"Buyer may terminate the relationship with Supplier for any reason by (i) providing Supplier with notice and (ii) closing Buyers account for all services for which Supplier provide an account closing mechanism.
Buyers pay for the services they use to the point of account termination. Please see the AWS UK G-Cloud 9 Pricing Document affiliated with this Service in the Digital Marketplace.
Supplier customers retain control and ownership of their data. Supplier will not erase customer data for 30 days following an account termination. This allows customers to retrieve content from Supplier services so long as the customer has paid any charges for any post-termination use of the service offerings and all other amounts due.
"
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Using the web interface
-
Almost all functionality for each AWS services is exposed through the web console.
The web console facilitates management for all aspects of the AWS account in a consolidated view whilst providing access to all services and their respective functionalities.
In some cases, specific configuration parameters of a service are dedicated to, and only available from, the CLI, SDK, or API interface. - Web interface accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web interface is accessible
- Not known
- Web interface accessibility testing
- None
- API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
- All functionality is exposed via an API.
- API automation tools
-
- Ansible
- Chef
- SaltStack
- Terraform
- Puppet
- Other
- Other API automation tools
-
- Wide range of 3rd party services hook into AWS APIs.
- SDKs for Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Java, .NET, Node.js.
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- HTML
- Other
- Command line interface
- Yes
- Command line interface compatibility
-
- Linux or Unix
- Windows
- MacOS
- Using the command line interface
- All functionality is available via the CLI.
Scaling
- Scaling available
- Yes
- Scaling type
- Automatic
- Independence of resources
-
Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them.
Services which provide virtualized operational environments to customers (i.e. EC2) ensure that customers are segregated via security management processes/controls at the network and hypervisor level.
AWS continuously monitors service usage to project infrastructure needs to support availability commitments/requirements. AWS maintains a capacity planning model to assess infrastructure usage and demands at least monthly, and usually more frequently. In addition, the AWS capacity planning model supports the planning of future demands to acquire and implement additional resources based upon current resources and forecasted requirements. - Usage notifications
- Yes
- Usage reporting
-
- API
- SMS
- Other
Analytics
- Infrastructure or application metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
-
- CPU
- Disk
- HTTP request and response status
- Memory
- Network
- Number of active instances
- Other
- Other metrics
-
- AWS resources: e.g. Amazon EC2/Amazon RDS DB instances, DynamoDB tables
- Custom metrics generated by customers’ applications and services
- Metrics associated with log files generated by the application
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Reseller providing extra features and support
- Organisation whose services are being resold
- Amazon Web Services
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Up to Developed Vetting (DV)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
-
- United Kingdom
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- EU-US Privacy Shield agreement locations
- Other locations
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Supplier-defined controls
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Penetration testing approach
- Another external penetration testing organisation
- Protecting data at rest
- Other
- Other data at rest protection approach
-
AWS adheres to independently validated privacy, data protection, security protections and control processes. (Listed under “certifications”).
AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud; customers are responsible for security in the cloud. AWS enables customers to control their content (where it will be stored, how it will be secured in transit or at rest, how access to their AWS environment will be managed).
Wherever appropriate, AWS offers customers options to add additional security layers to data at rest, via scalable and efficient encryption features. AWS offers flexible key management options and dedicated hardware-based cryptographic key storage. - Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
- Equipment disposal approach
- In-house destruction process
Backup and recovery
- Backup and recovery
- Yes
- What’s backed up
-
- Machine image
- Volumes
- Cross-region replication; bucket versioning, lifecycle rules
- Swagger export
- Code download
- Tables and Data
- Logs
- Emails
- Disk snapshots
- Backup controls
- Manual or scheduled API call
- Datacentre setup
- Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
- Scheduling backups
- Users schedule backups through a web interface
- Backup recovery
- Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
-
- Private network or public sector network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
- Other
- Other protection between networks
-
Network devices, including firewall and other boundary devices, are in place to monitor and control communications at the external boundary of the network and at key internal boundaries within the network. These boundary devices employ rule sets, access control lists (ACL), and configurations to enforce the flow of information to specific information system services.
ACLs, or traffic flow policies, are established on each managed interface, which manage and enforce the flow of traffic. ACL policies are approved by Amazon Information Security. - Data protection within supplier network
- Other
- Other protection within supplier network
-
Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them. AWS gives customers ownership and control over their content by design through simple, but powerful tools that allow customers to determine how their content will be secured in transit.
AWS enables customers to open a secure, encrypted channel to AWS services using TLS/SSL, and/or IPsec or TLS VPN (if applicable), or other means of protection the customer wish to use.
API calls can be encrypted with TLS/SSL to maintain confidentiality; the AWS Console connection is encrypted with TLS.
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
AWS currently provides SLAs for several services. Due to the rapidly evolving nature of AWS’s product offerings, SLAs are best reviewed directly on our website via the links below:
• Amazon EC2 SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/
• Amazon S3 SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/s3-sla
• Amazon CloudFront SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/sla/
• Amazon Route 53 SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/route53/sla/
• Amazon RDS SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/rds-sla/
• AWS Shield Advanced SLA: https://aws.amazon.com/shield/sla/
Well-architected solutions on AWS that leverage AWS Service SLA’s and unique AWS capabilities such as multiple Availability Zones, can ease the burden of achieving specific SLA requirements. - Approach to resilience
-
The AWS Business Continuity plan details the process that AWS follows in the case of an outage, from detection to deactivation. AWS has developed a three-phased approach: Activation and Notification Phase, Recovery Phase, and Reconstitution Phase. This approach ensures that AWS performs system recovery and reconstitution efforts in a methodical sequence, maximizing the effectiveness of the recovery and reconstitution efforts and minimizing system outage time due to errors and omissions.
AWS maintains a ubiquitous security control environment across all regions. Each data centre is built to physical, environmental, and security standards in an active-active configuration, employing an n+1 redundancy model, ensuring system availability in the event of component failure. Components (N) have at least one independent backup component. All data centres are online and serving traffic. In case of failure, there is sufficient capacity to enable traffic to be load-balanced to the remaining sites.
Customers are responsible for implementing contingency planning, training and testing for their systems hosted on AWS. AWS provides customers with the capability to implement a robust continuity plan, including the utilization of frequent server instance back-ups, data redundancy replication, and the flexibility to place instances and store data within multiple geographic regions across multiple Availability Zones. - Outage reporting
- Public dashboard; personalised dashboard with API and events; configurable alerting (email / SMS / messaging)
Identity and authentication
- User authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
- Limited access network (for example PSN)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Other
- Other user authentication
-
AWS controls access via unique user ID/password authentication. No actions are permissible without authentication. Remote access is multi-factor, login attempts are limited, remote administrative access attempts are logged and reviewed by Security. Suspicious activity initiates incident response procedures.
A session lock out policy that is systematically enforced: locks are retained until identification/authentication procedures are concluded.
AWS’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) system controls access to AWS services/resources. IAM facilitates the issuance of access permissions per user/group. MFA is available at no extra cost. - Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
-
IAM provides user access control to AWS services, APIs and specific resources. Other controls include time, originating IP address, SSL use, and whether users authenticated via MFA devices.
API calls to launch/terminate instances, change firewalls, and perform other functions are signed by customers’ Amazon Secret Access Key (either the root AWS Account’s Secret Access Key or the Secret Access key of a user created with AWS IAM). Amazon EC2 API calls cannot be made on customers’ behalf without access to customers’ Secret Access Ke.
API calls can be encrypted with TLS/SSL for confidentiality and customers can use TLS/SSL-protected API endpoints. - Access restriction testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Management access authentication
- 2-factor authentication
- Devices users manage the service through
- Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- User-defined
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- You control when users can access audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- At least 12 months
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- EY CertifyPoint
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- 11/11/2016
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
- N/A
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- Yes
- CSA STAR accreditation date
- 11/11/2016
- CSA STAR certification level
- Level 3: CSA STAR Certification
- What the CSA STAR doesn’t cover
- N/A
- PCI certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
- Coalfire Systems Inc
- PCI DSS accreditation date
- 25/01/2018
- What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
- N/A
- Other security certifications
- Yes
- Any other security certifications
-
- Cyber Essentials Plus
- ISO 27017
- ISO 27018
- SOC 1/2/3
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Information security policies and processes
- Cyber Essentials Plus; ISO 27017; ISO 27018; SOC 1/2/3
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
-
Changes to AWS services and features follow secure software development practices, including security risk reviews prior to launch. Developer access to production environments is via explicit access system requests, subject to owner review and authorisation.
Teams set bespoke change management standards per service, underpinned by standard AWS guidelines.
All production environment changes are reviewed, tested and approved. Stages include design, documentation, implementation (including rollback procedures), testing (non-production environment), peer to peer review (business impact/technical rigour/code), final approval by authorised party.
Emergency changes follow AWS incident response procedures. Exceptions to change management processes are documented and escalated to AWS management. - Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
AWS Security performs vulnerability scans on the host operating system, web applications, and databases in the AWS environment. Approved 3rd party vendors conduct external assessments (minimum frequency: quarterly). Identified vulnerabilities are monitored and evaluated. Countermeasures are designed and implemented to neutralise known/newly identified vulnerabilities.
AWS Security monitors newsfeeds/vendor sites for patches and receives customer intelligence via http://aws.amazon.com/security/vulnerability-reporting/.
AWS customers are responsible for all scanning, penetration testing, file integrity monitoring and intrusion detection for their Amazon EC2 and Amazon ECS instances/ applications. Scans should include customer IP addresses (not AWS endpoints). AWS endpoint testing is part of AWS compliance vulnerability scans. - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
-
AWS deploys (pan-environmental) monitoring devices to collect information on unauthorized intrusion attempts, usage abuse, and network/application bandwidth usage. Devices monitor:
• Port scanning attacks
• Usage (CPU, processes, disk utilization, swap rates, software-error generated losses)
• Application metrics
• Unauthorized connection attempts
Near real-time alerts flag potential compromise incidents, based on AWS set thresholds.
Requests to AWS KMS are logged and visible via an AWS CloudTrail Amazon S3 bucket. Logs provide request information, under which CMK, and identify the AWS resource protected through =CMK use. Log events are visible to the customer after turning on AWS CloudTrail in their account. - Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
-
AWS adopts a three-phased approach to manage incidents:
1. Activation and Notification Phase
2. Recovery Phase
3. Reconstitution Phase
To ensure the effectiveness of the AWS Incident Management plan, AWS conducts incident response testing, providing excellent coverage for the discovery of defects and failure modes as well as testing the systems for potential customer impact.
The Incident Response Test Plan is executed annually, in conjunction with the Incident Response plan. It includes multiple scenarios, potential vectors of attack, the inclusion of the systems integrator in reporting and coordination and varying reporting/detection avenues.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)
Separation between users
- Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
- Yes
- Who implements virtualisation
- Supplier
- Virtualisation technologies used
- Other
- Other virtualisation technology used
- AWS proprietary
- How shared infrastructure is kept separate
-
Customer environments are logically segregated, preventing users and customers from accessing unassigned resources. Customers maintain full control over their data access. Services which provide virtualized operational environments to customers, ensure that customers are segregated and prevent cross-tenant privilege escalation and information disclosure via hypervisors and instance isolation.
Different instances running on the same physical machine are isolated from each other via the Xen hypervisor. The Amazon EC2 firewall resides within the hypervisor layer, between the physical network interface and the instance's virtual interface. All packets pass through this layer. The physical random-access memory (RAM) is separated using similar mechanisms.
Energy efficiency
- Energy-efficient datacentres
- Yes
Pricing
- Price
- £0.01 a unit
- Discount for educational organisations
- No
- Free trial available
- Yes
- Description of free trial
-
Introductory 12 months free. Conditions apply.
750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux t2.micro instance usage (1 GiB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support)
750 hours of Amazon EC2 Microsoft Windows Server† t2.micro instance usage (1 GiB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) –