CIS Hardened Images in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud

The Center for Internet Security^® (CIS^®) is an official launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. It offers CIS Hardened Images^® to help public sector and regulated organizations in the European Union deploy compliant, secure cloud workloads with confidence and ease.

Explore CIS Hardened Images

What Is the European Sovereign Cloud?

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is designed to support organizations across the European Union with strict data residency, operational control, and regulatory requirements on AWS. It enables customers in the public sector and critical infrastructure entities to adopt cloud services while maintaining sovereignty over their data, governance, and access.

For organizations operating under frameworks such as GDPR, NIS2, and national public sector mandates, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud provides a foundation for cloud adoption that aligns with European values of trust, transparency, and control.

Why CIS Matters in a Sovereign Cloud Environment

Secure by Design
CIS develops globally recognized, consensus-based security best practices used by governments and enterprises worldwide.
Compliance-Ready Foundations
The CIS Benchmarks® are secure configuration guidelines that map to regulatory and policy requirements, helping organizations demonstrate due diligence and reduce audit friction.
Operational Trust
CIS provides trusted, operationally validated security guidance that organizations depend on to reduce risk and maintain secure, resilient infrastructure.
Global and Regional Alignment
CIS security best practices scale globally while supporting region-specific regulatory and sovereignty needs.

CIS Hardened Images in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud

EUP_PreAnnouncement CIS Hardened Images are secure virtual machine images pre-hardened to the CIS Benchmarks. Built to reduce misconfiguration risk, defend against common threats in the cloud, and accelerate secure deployments they provide a trusted starting point for security, and compliance in the cloud.

As an official launch partner, CIS is introducing CIS Hardened Images to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, enabling organizations to move from months of manual hardening to minutes of deployment.

Key Benefits:

Pre-hardened to industry-leading, vendor-neutral CIS Benchmarks
Reduced time to secure cloud deployment
Consistent security across multi-cloud environments
Support for compliance-driven cloud workloads

Designed for Organizations with the Highest Trust Requirements

Public Sector and Government Agencies

Support national and EU-level cloud sovereignty, compliance, and security mandates.

Critical Infrastructure Operators

Establish secure, repeatable cloud security and compliance foundations for essential services.

Highly Regulated Industries

Deploy secure cloud workloads aligned with strict regulatory and audit requirements.

How CIS Hardened Images Work

Cloud‑Native Services
CIS Hardened Images are built and maintained with third-party automation for cloud environments and optimized for use within the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, supporting modern, scalable workloads.
Simplified Cloud Deployment
Pre-configured virtual machine images reduce manual hardening effort, helping teams deploy secure workloads at the OS level -- in minutes instead of months.
Ongoing Maintenance
CIS Hardened Images receive ongoing maintenance, including benchmark updates, OS patches, and security hardening adjustments, to keep cloud workloads aligned with current best practices.

Security and Compliance Considerations

Pre-hardened to CIS Benchmarks
CIS Hardened Images align to globally recognized standards that take the guesswork out of system hardening.
Supports the Shared Responsibility Model
CIS Hardened Images help customers fulfill their responsibility for secure configuration management at the OS level with trusted, secure, cloud configurations.
Audit and Policy Alignment
Provides a defensible security baseline that supports internal policies and external regulatory requirements.