Joint offering from CIS and SANS Institute pairs CIS Benchmark-aligned AMIs with four SANS cloud security courses
CLIFTON PARK, NY, UNITED STATES, June 11, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS®) and SANS Institute today announced a new approach to securing cloud migrations by pairing CIS Hardened Images® with SANS cloud security training, available directly through AWS Marketplace.
The combined offering enables organizations to migrate to AWS with security built in from the start, reducing risk, eliminating configuration drift, and strengthening team expertise.
As enterprises accelerate cloud and AI adoption, security gaps such as manual hardening, misconfigurations, and limited cloud experience continue to slow migration and increase exposure. This collaboration unites CIS Benchmark aligned infrastructure with hands on practitioner training to help organizations close those gaps while accelerating deployment.
“Migration is a defining moment for security,” said Curtis Dukes, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security Best Practices at CIS. “CIS Hardened Images establish trusted, Benchmark aligned baselines that reduce risk and support compliance from day one.”
Built on Two Pillars: Secure Infrastructure + Skilled Teams
CIS Hardened Images: Pre-configured, CIS Benchmark aligned AMIs for Windows, Linux, and container workloads that reduce manual hardening and accelerate secure deployment.
SANS Institute Training: Practitioner led courses that equip teams to design, validate, and scale secure AWS environments, including (but not limited to):
• SEC549: Cloud Security Architecture – secure AWS landing zone design
• LDR520: Emerging Trends for Cyber Leaders: AI and Cloud – governance and oversight
• SEC510: Cloud Security Engineering and Controls – attack informed validation
• SEC540: Cloud Native Security and DevSecOps Automation – automation and drift prevention
“CIS Hardened Images handle the first day of a cloud deployment. The next thousand days depend on whether your team can spot configuration drift, validate new architectures against an evolving threat model, and respond to cloud-specific failure modes,” said Rob T. Lee, Chief AI Officer and Chief of Research at SANS Institute. “The SANS courses paired with this offering are built around those operational realities.”
Integrated with AWS services such as AWS Control Tower, AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), and AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), the combined approach supports secure migration planning, execution, and ongoing operations.
“Migrating to the cloud is one of the most consequential decisions an organization can make, and security shouldn’t be an afterthought or a bottleneck,” said Rick Buettner, Managing Director of Global Nonprofits at AWS. “CIS and SANS bring deep, mission-driven expertise to this challenge. By combining infrastructure with world-class practitioner training in AWS Marketplace, we’re giving every organization in any sector, a faster and more secure path to the cloud.”
How the Joint Offering Supports Organizations
• Faster migrations – fewer manual configuration steps
• Compliance at launch – alignment with PCI DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and more
• Reduced risk – hardened baselines validated against real world threats
• Lower costs – fewer incidents and reduced audit burden
• Drift free security – continuous compliance through automation
CIS Hardened Images and SANS training are available now through AWS Marketplace. Organizations can deploy secure infrastructure immediately and equip teams with the skills needed to sustain and scale security in AWS.
For more information about the partnership and solution offering, visit cisecurity.org.
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About CIS
The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS) makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses, and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation. We are a community-driven nonprofit, responsible for the CIS Critical Security Controls® and CIS Benchmarks® guidelines, globally recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data. We lead a global community of IT professionals to continuously evolve these standards and provide products and services to proactively safeguard against emerging threats. Our CIS Hardened Images® provide secure, on-demand, scalable computing environments in the cloud. CIS is home to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (MS-ISAC®) organization, the trusted resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial government entities, and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (EI-ISAC®) organization, which supports the rapidly changing cybersecurity needs of U.S. election offices. To learn more, visit cisecurity.org or follow us on X: @CISecurity.
About SANS
The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Today, SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cybersecurity training and certification to professionals in government and commercial institutions worldwide. Renowned SANS instructors teach more than 85 courses at in-person and virtual cybersecurity events and OnDemand. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates practitioner skills through more than 50 hands-on technical certifications in cybersecurity. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master’s and bachelor’s degrees, graduate certificates, and an undergraduate certificate in cybersecurity. SANS also delivers a wide variety of free resources to the InfoSec community, including consensus projects, research reports, webcasts, podcasts, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet’s early warning system–the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners representing varied global organizations, from corporations to universities, working together to support and educate the global information security community. www.sans.org
Kelly Wyland
Center for Internet Security
+1 518-256-6978
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