Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
Earlier this year, the United States Department of the Treasury (UST) released a report entitled “The Financial Services Sector’s Adoption of Cloud Services.” This report is grounded in discussions with key financial services and technology organizations, including Amazon. The document highlights the numerous advantages that financial institutions (FIs) and consumers can gain from adopting cloud services, such as lower costs, quicker deployment of new IT assets, faster product and service development, and improved security and resilience capabilities.
The report underscores the need for ongoing progress in critical areas related to cloud adoption, including operational risk, transparency, international regulatory fragmentation, and training. Amazon is dedicated to collaborating with the UST and financial regulators to enhance the security and resilience of the financial services sector. In this blog, we will explore how Amazon supports its customers in building and operating on the cloud securely, resiliently, and in compliance with regulatory standards.
Ensuring Stringent Security Standards
Security is paramount at Amazon, and we are steadfast in our commitment to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and protecting their data. We provide a comprehensive set of security services and features to ensure that all customers, including government agencies and financial service providers who entrust us with sensitive information, have complete control over their content. This includes the ability to encrypt, safeguard, relocate, and delete data in accordance with their organization’s security policies.
The UST report identifies enhanced security and resilience as key motivators for cloud adoption among FIs, and Amazon’s infrastructure is designed to be the most secure and adaptable cloud computing environment available. Our architecture meets stringent security requirements for military applications, global banks, and other high-sensitivity organizations. We offer over 300 security, compliance, and governance services and features that cater to financial services clients of all sizes—from fintech startups to the world’s largest banks, broker-dealers, insurers, and market centers.
Additionally, Amazon adheres to 143 security standards and compliance certifications, including PCI-DSS, CSA STAR Level 2, ISO 22301, 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701, GDPR, FIPS 140-2, and NIST 800-53 and Cybersecurity Framework (CSF). This helps our financial services customers meet compliance demands for virtually every regulatory body worldwide.
Building for Resilience
Cloud adoption plays a crucial role in mitigating risks faced by the financial services industry as it transitions from outdated technology. Amazon is committed to bolstering the resilience of the global financial services sector, assisting individual organizations in minimizing their operational risks.
There are various strategies to enhance resilience, and we concur with the UST report that a multi-region architecture in Amazon is a more pragmatic solution than attempting seamless portability across cloud service providers (CSPs). Our global infrastructure, consisting of 31 Regions and 99 Availability Zones, is designed for security and reliability. While we strive to minimize operational incidents, we provide comprehensive post-incident communications through tools such as Security Bulletins and Post Event Summaries.
Promoting Transparency
To ensure scalable and comprehensive assurance for our global clientele, Amazon engages multiple independent third-party auditors who conduct extensive assessments of our security controls. These evaluations provide a high degree of transparency regarding the design and operation of our security measures.
Customers can audit their own Amazon environments, utilizing tools like AWS CloudTrail, AWS CloudWatch, and AWS GuardDuty to gain insight into account activities, real-time monitoring, detection scanning, and automatic remediation of discrepancies. Furthermore, we provide four distinct levels of support tailored to the scale of workloads in the cloud. Although service disruptions are infrequent, our AWS Health Dashboard offers both public and account-specific views to aid customers in monitoring their environments.
We fulfill customer due diligence requirements by making detailed control information publicly available via our Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) and System and Organization Controls (SOC) reports. We are committed to facilitating customer audits as part of regulatory compliance and enhancing the efficiency of the auditing process.
Coordinating International Regulations
Amazon actively engages with financial regulators and policymakers worldwide to address current and emerging regulatory requirements. We assist them in understanding how AWS services can mitigate certain risks associated with the global financial system.
We advocate for regulatory coordination and harmonization across jurisdictions, aimed at creating a level playing field for customers and preventing market fragmentation. Amazon responds to inquiries from regulators on various issues, including security, resilience, and concentration risk, contributing to policy discussions and industry consultations on regulatory reforms.
We also support regulatory collaboration through national and international bodies, including the Financial Stability Board (FSB), to help advance a coherent cross-border regulatory framework for financial services customers interested in adopting cloud solutions. Consistent regulations across sectors and regions could lower costs for consumers, financial institutions, and regulatory authorities by eliminating redundancy in regulatory assessments.
Training and Skill Development
Amazon offers extensive education, training, and certification resources to our financial services customers and partners, featuring hundreds of courses at no cost through AWS Training and Certification. Our goal is to equip 29 million individuals globally with technical skills for free through cloud computing training. Our comprehensive enablement programs, such as the AWS Skills Guild, empower customers to develop the expertise necessary for secure and resilient cloud operations.
We also regularly produce technical content, including our Prescriptive Guidance and AWS Security Reference Architecture, to help customers effectively configure and utilize cloud services to meet their business objectives.
Moreover, our Security, Compliance, and Audit teams collaborate with financial services clients to implement best practices for operational excellence, security, reliability, and performance. We provide tools to assist in designing secure and resilient workloads, including the Well-Architected Framework along with a wealth of blogs, whitepapers, and sample architectures.
In addition, we have established the AWS Customer Incident Response Team (CIRT) to offer training and resources that prepare customers for potential environment incidents.
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