Imagine cutting research compliance time from over a year to just weeks. Traditional local systems are slow, leading to missed funding deadlines, while compliant institutions secure grants more quickly.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) created the Secure Research Environment (SRE) to help institutions stay flexible and competitive as security and compliance standards change. This ready-to-use cloud setup provides a solid security foundation and standard designs that accelerate your compliance process. When funding is tight, the SRE enables organizations to build compliance-ready systems, allowing researchers to focus on their work and institutions to better compete for grants.
With years of experience in cloud security, compliance audits, and risk management, this post explains how secure research spaces (SREs) use security controls and design patterns to help meet various compliance standards. It shows how automation and standard designs make it easier to access regulated research settings, but also notes that final compliance depends on how your organization sets up and manages the system.
When Compliance Becomes A Barrier To Discovery.
At the moment, your researchers are dealing with a tough situation. Compliance standards are changing quickly, and grant funding is harder to find.
The NIH now requires NIST SP 800-171 for controlled access. Biomedical data repositories handling controlled unclassified information (CUI) require CMMC 2.0, or your institution will lose access to federal research grants. Other US agencies are moving to similar requirements. Internationally, organizations must comply with the GDPR and ISO 27001 standards to protect sensitive data. Canada and the UK enforce their own data privacy regulations.
As compliance requirements grow, so do the costs of keeping up. These problems can affect your whole institution. If you can’t secure funding from limited resources, you can’t grow your research programs. For universities, this might affect their R1 status and future growth. For national labs, research hospitals, and defense contractors, it could mean losing out on important grants and making it harder to attract top talent. Not meeting compliance standards can also bring regulatory and financial risks. False claims can lead to large fines, and if controlled unclassified information (CUI) is leaked, there may be extra penalties.
Address Multiple Compliance Frameworks With A Single Pre-Configured Solution
The SRE on AWS helps your institution address these problems by providing a strong, secure foundation for working with sensitive and protected data. In the US, this covers standards like NIST SP 800-172, CMMC, HIPAA, FISMA, and others. Internationally, the SRE supports GDPR, PIPEDA, ISO 27001, and more. The SRE establishes a central environment that empowers your research, IT, and support teams to help researchers across several fields while maintaining compliance with funding rules. AWS delivers this through a ready-made multi-account setup that addresses key compliance needs.ds.
Your research organization can set up this solution in less than 3 months, and sometimes in just 1 week. For single frameworks, it costs much less than traditional local systems, which often require significant investments and can leave researchers waiting or resorting to workarounds that may not meet compliance standards.
Under the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for the technical foundation, infrastructure, security, automated controls, and preventive safeguards. Your institution manages its own data, policies, and documentation with help from AWS guides and training materials for IT teams. For example, researchers using sensitive health data can rely on the SRE’s automated HIPAA configuration to meet compliance without manual policy setup. Another example: when applying for a new grant, a researcher’s workspace is automatically created in the correct compliance group, eliminating the need for lengthy paperwork. This central approach makes compliance management easier and reduces last-minute requests from researchers.
How the SRE Architecture Automates Compliance
The SRA uses the Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS (LZA) to automate the setup of a secure, resilient, and scalable cloud foundation. Depending on what your organization needs, you can deploy the SRA on AWS GovCloud (US), on commercial AWS, or both.
Figure 1 shows the setup, which includes AWS Organizations with a multi-account structure, centralized identity and access management (IAM), logging and monitoring, a segmented network with traffic checks, and centralized DNS management. The SRI creates separate compliance groups called organizational units for different roles. When a researcher gets a grant, they work with IT to see which standards apply. IT then assigns them to the appropriate group, such as HIPAA for health research or CMMC for defense projects. Researchers with multiple grants can access multiple groups at once, and each project automatically receives the appropriate controls.
When your researchers start services in their assigned group, they automatically get the right security and compliance controls. For instance, a biomedical researcher logging in will immediately work within an environment configured to meet the necessary CUI or HIPAA protocols, requiring no additional setup on the researcher’s part. This lets them meet standards and do their research securely without extra setup.
Scale and Adapt as Your Compliance Needs Evolve.
As your institution’s needs change, your IT team can quickly add new compliance groups or expand existing ones without rebuilding everything. When rules change, you simply update your SRE settings instead of starting over. This protects your investment and keeps you eligible for grants as your research grows. To address protection requirements that go beyond standard compliance frameworks, your team can extend the SRE with a trusted research environment (TRE) on AWS. This adds an additional security layer at the data level for fine-grained control over data ingress and egress.
Give Your Researchers A Perfect Compliance Experience
While the SRE manages compliance at the infrastructure level, your researchers experience a much simpler process. For them, compliance runs in the background. They do not need to know HIPAA rules or configure security. Researchers just log in to a secure research portal that displays only what they need for their grant. This lets them focus on their work while the system handles compliance automatically. The portal also serves as the main entry point for researchers and their partners, enabling easier collaboration while maintaining strict compliance.
This straightforward approach provides your researchers with what they need and helps your institution avoid common issues such as shadow IT, unauthorized server purchases, and last-minute compliance resource setups.
Extending Secure Research Globally
Research institutions worldwide face the same challenge: meeting strict compliance rules without slowing down discovery. The AWS SRE uses a flexible multi-account setup that enables you to comply with any country’s rules, whether you follow a single national standard or several international ones. The SRE delivers a steady, scalable foundation that supports your research wherever you operate.
Get Started With Alignment And Deployment
To implement the SRE successfully, your organization needs to be aligned from the start. Your CIO, vice president of research, and CISO should work together early to support your researchers’ compliance needs. Bringing these leaders alongside a shared goal before you begin will help ensure success. Once you lay the foundation, each SRE setup proceeds along two main work streams that run in parallel. By building the infrastructure and preparing compliance documents together, you avoid the long wait between technical completion and audit readiness. The two work streams are:re:
- Technical build-deploy infrastructure, including AWS organizations, organizational work, network architecture, security controls, and automation using the LZA
- Compliance and audit readiness-AWS Security Assurance Services prepares you for certification by providing documentation, control mapping, and evidence collection.
AWS offers three flexible pathways for deployment:
- AWS Partners and Security Assurance Services: Partners handle deployment, while assurance services prep you for certifications. Ideal for expert-supported implementation. Partners can maintain your environment or teach your team. Start by exploring the AWS Partner Network.
- Guided build and security assurance services – your team builds the SRE with guidance from AWS solutions architects, while security assurance services handle compliance. Best for bodies seeking to develop internal expertise and gain deep knowledge for independent management and scaling. To get started, review the LZA implementation guide and connect with your AWS account team.
- AWS Professional Services and Security Assurance Services – AWS Professional Services builds your environment, and Security Assurance Services handles compliance. Best for bodies seeking AWS engagement with full service implementation. To get started, contact AWS Professional Services to scope your engagement.
Is Your Institution Ready to Gain an Edge in Competing for Grants?
Choose the SRA option that best fits your needs to streamline compliance and stay grant-competitive.
You can also contact AWS directly to learn more about setting up your SRE.
Source: Accelerate your organization’s compliance journey with a Secure Research Environment on AWS
