July 2023 – Wolk Technology

AWS’s Commitment to Sustainability and Reducing its Carbon Footprint

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most used cloud service provider, with a market share of 32% as of Q1 2023. Because AWS is a critical part of Amazon’s services and infrastructures, it is bound to the company’s Climate Pledge, a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Learn how AWS achieves sustainability and reduces carbon emissions and why sustainability in the cloud matters.

The AWS Renewable Energy Initiatives
Amazon is committed to renewable energy projects and investing in clean power sources to help AWS achieve its net-zero objectives. There are three major ways Amazon addresses sustainability and ensures AWS reaches full carbon neutrality:

1. Amazon’s investments in green energy include wind farms and solar farms. The company currently operates 164 full-scale wind and solar power facilities and over 200 rooftop solar facilities. In 2022, Amazon became the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power.
2. Another sustainability investment is renewable energy Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). A PPA is a long-term agreement between a power producer and a buyer to purchase electricity directly from the producer at reduced rates. Amazon’s PPAs are expected to help it cover 100% of its operations with renewable energy by 2025.
3. Amazon actively participates in carbon offsetting and reduction programs to further eliminate carbon emissions from its operational workflows, from industry partnerships to operating fleets of electric vehicles.

How AWS Optimises the Efficiency of its Data Centers
In addition to ensuring Amazon uses as many renewable and carbon-neutral power sources as possible, AWS hardware and infrastructure benefit from the latest innovations to improve energy efficiency.

AWS energy efficiency innovations are divided into three distinct categories: power-efficient hardware, cooling efficiency, and performance prediction technologies.

● Power-efficient hardware: AWS-designed general-purpose processors such as the Graviton3 are designed to offer 25% more performance than their predecessors while using up to 60% less energy than non-Graviton equivalents.
● Cooling efficiency: AWS’s latest data centre technologies use upgraded cooling systems, reducing energy usage by 20% compared to previous-generation equivalents.
● Performance prediction: Amazon uses both simulated and real-time performance modelling tools to understand how their data centres use energy and how to optimise their power consumption further.

The Benefits of Sustainable Cloud Computing
Choosing AWS as your cloud service provider is an excellent way to make your organisation greener and more sustainable. According to a 2019 451 Research study, moving to AWS reduces an enterprise’s carbon footprint by 72% on average.

AWS also provides organisations and businesses with fully scalable cloud infrastructure, ensuring you can scale your operations and optimise resource utilisation as needed. In turn, scalability lets you limit energy and resource consumption, reducing carbon emissions further.

Become an AWS Sustainability Compliant Organisation with WOLK
WOLK Technology is an experienced AWS Partner with the resources to help your business comply with the pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Contact us today for a review of your business’s sustainability.

Using AWS Security Services to Enhance Workplace Security | Amazon GuardDuty and Amazon Inspector

While workplace security is critical for organisations of all sizes, the widespread adoption of remote work has introduced new security challenges. This means your business must implement security measures fully adapted to modern cybersecurity needs.

Three critical AWS security services can help protect your data and your company:
Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector and AWS Macie.

1. How Amazon GuardDuty Keeps Business Data Safe

Amazon’s GuardDuty service is an intelligent threat detection system that provides your business network with continuous security monitoring.

The primary purpose of Amazon GuardDuty is to protect your AWS accounts, workloads, and data stored on Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) servers. It monitors and analyses activity, detects unusual or malicious behaviour, and ranks them by threat severity levels.

When Amazon GuardDuty detects an actionable threat, it mitigates it as early as possible with automated responses. The service also provides detailed reports called GuardDuty findings, allowing you to tailor GuardDuty to your needs and focus on specific threats.

2. Scan for Vulnerabilities with Amazon Inspector

Amazon Inspector is a Vulnerability Management Service (VMS). Although it may seem similar to Amazon GuardDuty due to its continuous monitoring service, Amazon Inspector primarily focuses on software and network vulnerability.

Amazon Inspector keeps your network safe by automatically and regularly scanning your Amazon EC2 instances, AWS Lambda functions, and other eligible resources. Inspector also checks for unintended network exposure and software vulnerabilities, which could put your data at risk.

Amazon Inspector will automatically re-scan your organisation’s networks when you install a new patch or software package or when a new Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) entry is published.

3. Completing Business Data Security with Amazon Macie

Amazon Macie is an automated data security service powered using Amazon’s machine learning (ML) and pattern-matching technologies. Macie’s role in your organisation’s data security is automatically discovering, tracking, categorising, and protecting your business data.

Amazon Macie can detect and determine the sensitivity of your business data, from personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) to intellectual property (IP) and critical financial information.

Common examples include:

● Names and addresses
● Credit card information
● AWS secret access keys
● Passport numbers
● Medical identification numbers
● Intellectual property, patent and trademark data

Amazon Macie is an efficient workplace security tool that clarifies the status of your company’s sensitive data. Macie’s tracking and categorisation systems automatically enhance business data visibility and detect potential security risks. It can also learn from user habits, identify potentially risky behaviour, and issue alerts and findings in detailed reports.

Enhance Workplace Security with WOLK
WOLK is committed to assisting your organisation by familiarising you with the AWS security pillar and adopting the best workplace security practices. We are a leading AWS Well-Architected Framework expert with the resources to guide your business and help you make the best security decisions. Contact us today to arrange a review.