Issued by: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)

Issue Date: November 14, 2014

Program Area: Distributed Data Collection (DDC) for RA Including HCRP/EDGE Server

Question: To what extent can issuers modify the Amazon Web Services (AWS) firewall?

Answer: Each Amazon instance will be provisioned with firewall rules. Users will be able to filter all access to only allow certain traffic that is explicitly allowed to that software. Issuers will define the port and protocols which will be allowed to their instances. Additionally, issuers can put their own host-based firewall or Internet Protocol (IP) tables in Red Hat to the security groups at the infrastructure level. It will be up to the issuer to determine the level of security that the issuer wants to implement on their virtual machine. More information on the Amazon firewall can be found in the Amazon Security webinar slide deck and Amazon set-up videos posted in the REGTAP Library (www.regtap.info) and on Amazon's security website www.aws.amazon.com/security.

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