In addition to being a marketing agency, Gate 39 Media is a technology consulting firm that offers financial and agricultural businesses custom development solutions, data management, systems integration, and cloud management expertise. When the business world began shifting to the cloud, we conducted our due diligence on several options before adopting Amazon Web Services (AWS) as one of our core hosting solutions.
While most people know Amazon for its Prime Day Deals and speedy shipping, it has also become a leader in the world of enterprise cloud services.
We talked with Gate 39 Media’s DevOps Specialist, Eduardo Estevez Nunez, to learn why Amazon Web Services is our website hosting provider of choice.
Can you please describe what Amazon Web Services is and what makes it special?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: Sure, I would be happy to! Amazon Web Services was launched in 2016 as a solution offering IT infrastructure services to businesses worldwide. Today, AWS is the leading cloud infrastructure provider, according to Statista.
AWS provides application hosting, web hosting, backup and storage, enterprise IT, content delivery, and databases, delivering services across 245 countries to millions of businesses in all industries. It has proven to be an excellent solution for our agency’s financial and agricultural clients.
A few factors that stand out to make AWS a preferred hosting and technology solution are its low cost, agility, flexibility, and security.
So, what makes AWS Cloud a secure hosting option for Gate 39 Media website clients?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: AWS is central to Gate 39 Media’s Web Hosting Services because the cloud service features reliable built-in security. Each website is fully protected behind a firewall, plus other features like a CDN (Content Delivery Network) which is a highly distributed platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user. Additionally, AWS has daily backups and 24-hour uptime status monitoring, both of which are essential to many financial industry firms that require dedicated servers for offsite daily backups for regulatory compliance.
What are the notable advantages of AWS security?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: Security and compliance go hand-in-hand. AWS follows and supports several key compliance and security certification standards, including:
- PCI DSS– The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a set of requirements intended to ensure that all companies that process, store, or transmit credit card information in a secure environment.
- HIPAA/HITECH– The HITECH Act encouraged healthcare providers to adopt electronic health records and improved privacy and security protections for healthcare data.
- FedRAMP– The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program standardizes security assessment and authorization for cloud products and services used by U.S. federal agencies. The goal is to make sure federal data is consistently and highly protected in the cloud.
- GDPR– The General Data Protection Regulation is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information from individuals who live in the European Union (EU).
- FIPS 140-2 – The Federal Information Processing Standard outlines the security requirements that need to be satisfied by cryptographic modules. This is used for private sector vendors who seek to have their products certified for government and regulated industry use.
- NIST 800-171– Compliance with NIST 800-171 is required for organizations that process or store controlled unclassified information (CUI). These controls apply to federal government contractors and sub-contractors, so if you have a contract with a federal agency, you must be compliant with this policy.
What is AWS Identity and Access Management?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the main service on AWS to securely manage users, groups, and permissions. It’s the way to properly ensure access to resources. Using IAM, you can create and oversee AWS users and groups and use permissions to allow or deny their access to AWS resources. IAM is a feature of all AWS accounts offered at no additional charge.
What is AWS IAM Identity Center and is it similar to Single Sign-On?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: Single Sign-On (SSO) is a method to centralize and manage user accounts and applications by using one set of credentials. For example, a user who might be logged onto a web portal might have access to a website or to a mobile app using the same credentials.
AWS IAM Identity Center is a cloud SSO services that makes it easy to centrally manage access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications, so it is a feature that helps streamline usage. AWS IAM Identity Center is the successor to AWS Single Sign-On.
You’re AWS Certified. What does it mean to be certified and what is your favorite aspect of AWS?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: Being AWS Certified is a fundamental step to understanding the AWS ecosystem and demonstrating the capability to deploy solutions properly and securely in an AWS production environment. Moreover, being AWS Certified can improve a technologist’s ability to better help customers. Customer service is at the very core of our business, so it was a natural certification to achieve to help provide the best experience possible for our hosting customers.
The certification training was rigorous and time-intensive, and one needs to spend hours practicing and reading in preparation to pass the certification exam. In my opinion, one needs to be incredibly dedicated in order to earn the AWS certification and, of course, with “learning” being one of Gate 39 Media’s core values, gaining this certification is representative of that as well.
On AWS, you can pursue different areas of specializations. Solutions Architect is the path that I am following, which has helped strengthen my overall knowledge of this ecosystem. Additionally, database specialization is my other favorite AWS topic.
Are all of Gate 39 Media’s web hosted clients on the AWS Cloud?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: Gate 39 Media services run on a multi-cloud solution, so we run AWS for WordPress websites that we host, and we leverage Microsoft Azure for .NET Portals.
If a company wanted to migrate their website hosting from a standard server to the AWS Cloud, how could Gate 39 Media help?
Eduardo Estevez Nunez: At Gate 39 Media we have a set of dedicated engineers with expertise in Cloud Migration Services. A high percentage of our clients come to us needing migration assistance, and we are ready to help through an established and secure migration process. Additionally, anyone who would like to learn more about our hosting or website development services are welcome to connect with us for a consultation.
Ready to discover the benefits of cloud hosting for your business website? Let’s talk!
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