GitHub is used by government agencies to collaborate on all sorts of interesting things, from software that aids first responders to White House policy, but sometimes agencies require a level of assurance that can only be afforded by a platform running on their own infrastructure.
Starting with version 2.2.2, released yesterday, AMIs for GitHub Enterprise, GitHub’s self-hosted offering, are available in the AWS GovCloud (US) region, allowing US customers with specific regulatory requirements to run GitHub Enterprise in a federally compliant cloud environment.
What is GovCloud?
GovCloud is an isolated Amazon Web Services environment used by US government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, along with contractors, researchers, educational institutions, and other US customers.
In terms of boxes checked, GovCloud has received a federal authority to operate (ATO), and conforms with U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrictions, Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) requirements, and Department of Defense (DoD) Cloud Security Model (CSM) Levels 3-5.
Getting started
You can begin using GitHub Enterprise in GovCloud today by requesting a free, 45-day trial, and customers that are already using GitHub Enterprise can migrate from other GitHub Enterprise deployment platforms to GovCloud by following these instructions.
If you have any questions about using GitHub in GovCloud, or GitHub + Government in general, please visit the AWS GovCloud page, or feel free to reach out to government@github.com at any time — we’d love to hear from you.
Happy (compliant) collaborating!
Written by
Ben Balter is Chief of Staff for Security at GitHub, the world’s largest software development platform. Previously, as a Staff Technical Program manager for Enterprise and Compliance, Ben managed GitHub’s on-premises and SaaS enterprise offerings, and as the Senior Product Manager overseeing the platform’s Trust and Safety efforts, Ben shipped more than 500 features in support of community management, privacy, compliance, content moderation, product security, platform health, and open source workflows to ensure the GitHub community and platform remained safe, secure, and welcoming for all software developers. Before joining GitHub’s Product team, Ben served as GitHub’s Government Evangelist, leading the efforts to encourage more than 2,000 government organizations across 75 countries to adopt open source philosophies for code, data, and policy development.
