Definition — IaaS

Government organisations can access, over the internet, the provider’s:

• hardware
• networking
• storage
• other infrastructure and computing resources.

IaaS allows government organisations to deploy and run their own operating systems and applications.

Government organisations can specify, depending on the contract, the amounts of processing, memory storage and networks needed.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) — National Institute of Standards and Technology

Required All-of-Government agreement for IaaS

Government organisations must use the AoG agreement for IaaS.

Infrastructure as a Service

Shared responsibility for security in IaaS

In IaaS, government organisations and service providers share responsibility for security. Each is responsible for managing different areas of IaaS.

Government organisations

Government organisations are responsible for the security controls for the:

• guest operating system
• application services
• data — including the applications they deploy in the IaaS and managing user permissions.

Service providers

Service providers are responsible for the implementation, management and maintenance of the security controls for the:

• data centre
• hardware
• virtualisation hypervisor.

Ownership of the information’s risk

Government organisations always own the risk of their information in a public cloud service, even though the management of certain security responsibilities are shared.

How to manage security ownership

Find out how government organisations handle their security ownership — making sure that risks are within their risk tolerance.

Security ownership in all service models

More information

New Zealand’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) lists and explains how each service model operates and the differing levels of responsibility for managing security.

Cloud computing: shared responsibility security models — NCSC