This G-Cloud 12 service is no longer available to buy.

The G-Cloud 12 framework expired on Monday 28 November 2022. Any existing contracts with CHESS ICT LIMITED are still valid.
CHESS ICT LIMITED

Chess Managed AWS Hosting

Delivered by our partner iomart, fully serviced and managed Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments. All the features and benefits of the AWS solution managed and supported by fully AWS accredited iomart technicians and consultants. Collaborative and Bespoke specifications to suit your managed AWS environment supported 24x7.

Features

  • AWS Storage & Content delivery
  • AWS Databases
  • AWS Deployment & Management
  • AWS Configuration Management
  • Priced at AWS standard price list

Benefits

  • Supported 24/7/365 by our ISO 20000-1 accredited teams
  • Dedicated account management team
  • Full integration of AWS Services
  • Access to AWS experts
  • Pay for what you use

Pricing

£500 a unit a month

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at PublicSectorSales@ChessICT.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

9 1 1 6 6 5 6 0 8 7 7 8 8 2 5

Contact

CHESS ICT LIMITED Joanne Austin - Commercial Bid Lead
Telephone: 0800 688 8858
Email: PublicSectorSales@ChessICT.co.uk

Service scope

Service constraints
None
System requirements
N/A

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Support is provided through iomart's support teams are available 24/7 to respond to alerts, take calls, make decisions and act to ensure that your services are operating effectively every second of the day. The support desk is accredited to lSO20000-2011 and IS027001-2013 standards and brings together 250 technical operations staff employed to cover everything with a guaranteed qualified engineering response within 15 minutes of notice dependent on the severity of the incident.
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
24 hours, 7 days a week
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
No
Support levels
Support is provided from iomart support teams are available 24/7 to respond to alerts, take calls, make decisions and act to ensure that your services are operating effectively every second of the day. The support desk is accredited to ISO2000O-2011 and ISO27001-2013 standards and brings together 250 technical operations staff employed to cover everything with a guaranteed qualified engineering response within 15 minutes of notice. As part of our on-going commitment to service excellence iomart will assign a dedicated Account Manager (Service Delivery Manager) and Technical Manager to the client. Our approach to Account Management has been developed to provide a value added service to our customers. The Account Manager's main role is to understand the core objectives of our clients’ businesses and ensure the services we are providing continually support the achievement of their goals.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
We provide a full on boarding service with supported online training supporting user documentation.
Service documentation
No
End-of-contract data extraction
End-of-contract data extraction Data can be extracted through multiple means as Edit defined by the client. Storage explorer Code based apps export VM images This can incur additional costs as "data out" is chargeable.
End-of-contract process
At the point of termination. all data. accounts and access will be permanently deleted. and will not be able to be recovered or restored. It is the responsibility of the customer to remove all data prior to termination. Additional costs driven by Amazon are applicable.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Using the web interface
Interface is provided through iomart deliver service desk facilities primarily via the iomart interface customer control panel. iomart provides customers with a web-based Control Panel. which provides a broad view of information and services surrounding their solution which allows authorised users to create and manage cloud services as well as raise, track and report on support
tickets.
Web interface accessibility standard
None or don’t know
How the web interface is accessible
The web interface is compatible with standard Windows accessibility options.
Web interface accessibility testing
None
API
No
Command line interface
No

Scaling

Scaling available
Yes
Scaling type
Manual
Independence of resources
AWS - Managed Amazon Web Services is a highly available and easily scalable with high capacity for large number of users.
Usage notifications
Yes
Usage reporting
Email

Analytics

Infrastructure or application metrics
Yes
Metrics types
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • Memory
  • Number of active instances
Reporting types
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra support
Organisation whose services are being resold
Iomart, Amazon

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
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
  • Files
  • Folders
  • Volumes
  • VMs
  • Applications
  • Workloads
  • Locally attached disk
Backup controls
The iomart Managed Service provides full support for backups.
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
  • Users contact the support team

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 (AC L), 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 AWS 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
Outage reporting Public dashboard; personalised dashboard with API and events: configurable alerting (email / SMS / messaging)

Identity and authentication

User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • 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 controlto AWS services, APls 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 Accounts 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 Key. 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
11/12/2013
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
As detailed within the SOA
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
Yes
CSA STAR accreditation date
02/01/2017
CSA STAR certification level
Level 1: CSA STAR Self-Assessment
What the CSA STAR doesn’t cover
N/A
PCI certification
Yes
Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
QSAC, Coalfire Systems Inc
PCI DSS accreditation date
11/07/2016
What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
PCI Data Security Standards 3.2 Level 1 Service Provider assessment and were found to be compliant for all the services outlined below. Service provider levels are defined as: Level 1: Any service provider that stores, processes and/or transmits over 300,000 transactions annually Level
2: Any service provider that stores. processes and/or transmits less than 300,000 transactions annually
Other security certifications
No

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
AWS implements formal. documented policies and procedures that provide guidance for operations and information security within the organisation. Policies address purpose, scope, roles, responsibilities and management commitment. Employees maintain policies in a centralised and accessible location. AWS Security Assurance is responsible for familiarizing employees with the AWS security policies. AWS has established information security functions that are aligned with defined structure. reporting lines. and responsibilities. Leadership involvement provides clear direction and visible support for security initiatives. The output of AWS Leadership reviews include any decisions or actions related to: - Improvement of the effectiveness of the ISMS. - Update of the risk assessment and treatment plan. - Modification of procedures and controls that affect information security to respond to internal or external events that may impact the ISMS. - Resource needs. - Improvement in how the effectiveness of controls is measured. Policies are approved by AWS leadership at least annually or following a significant change to the AWS environment.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change 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.
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.corn/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 Service/Security Team- set thresholds. Requests to AWS KMS are logged and visible via the account's AWS CloudTrail Amazon S3 bucket. Logs provide request information. under which CMK, and identify the AWS resource protected through the CMK use.
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
Description of energy efficient datacentres
The iomart EnMS combines best practices in project management, energy monitoring, and energy awareness along with an energy policy that governs our approach towards energy use and performance.
EnMS records and reports on energy usage and Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) for our data centre estate in the UK as well as how iomart is reducing energy consumption and improving energy efficiency as a Group. Monitored by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), iomart use our EnMS with Schneider Electric to analyse energy efficiency across our multiple UK data centres. We do this to ensure we meet our moral obligations and regulatory requirements under the Climate Change Agreement (CCA) and in accordance with the (ESOS) Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme.

Pricing

Price
£500 a unit a month
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
No

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at PublicSectorSales@ChessICT.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.