This product has charges associated with it for hardening and maintenance. This Citadel VM is secured using 300+ open source security controls and validated using Citadel Audit.
This product has charges associated with it for hardening and maintenance. This Citadel Hardened VM is secured using 300+ security controls and validated using Citadel Audit.
This AMI delivers a secure, stable, and high-performance environment for developing and running cloud and enterprise applications. Regularly updated and maintained, this Citadel VM embodies the pinnacle of reliability for your operations.
By deploying an image hardened with the Citadel Audit, organizations can significantly enhance efficiency while reducing costs, time, and associated risks. This Citadel VM integrates a comprehensive set of security recommendations leading open-source industry standards, ensuring a robust defense layer without compromising the technology's functionality or utility.
Each VM includes comprehensive documentation and a detailed security report from Citadel Audit, offering insights into the security enhancements and best practices implemented.
This is the recommended default AMI by our security experts at Citadel. We are committed to providing continuous security and maintenance updates for all instances running, ensuring your operations are safeguarded with the latest security standards.
Highlights
Current and Consistent: Citadel's hardened images are kept up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates, ensuring you always have the most recent advancements in security and technology at your fingertips.
Built on open source secure frameworks and validated by Citadel Audit, our solutions offer unparalleled security and reliability, widely accepted by governments and industries. Our community-driven approach safeguards critical infrastructure and sensitive data, proving our commitment to the highest cybersecurity standards. Essential for top-tier security defense.
AWS Marketplace now accepts line of credit payments through the PNC Vendor Finance program. This program is available to select AWS customers in the US, excluding NV, NC, ND, TN, & VT.
Pricing is based on actual usage, with charges varying according to how much you consume. Subscriptions have no end date and may be canceled any time. Alternatively, you can pay upfront for a contract, which typically covers your anticipated usage for the contract duration. Any usage beyond contract will incur additional usage-based costs.
Additional AWS infrastructure costs may apply. Use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate your infrastructure costs.
If you are an AWS Free Tier customer with a free plan, you are eligible to subscribe to this offer. You can use free credits to cover the cost of eligible AWS infrastructure. See AWS Free Tier for more details. If you created an AWS account before July 15th, 2025, and qualify for the Legacy AWS Free Tier, Amazon EC2 charges for Micro instances are free for up to 750 hours per month. See Legacy AWS Free Tier for more details.
You pay by the hour for the running software, billed on top of your AWS infrastructure costs. Pricing is organized by EC2 instance type, so your rate depends on the instance you choose to run this hardened operating system image. Each dimension maps to one specific instance size within families like general purpose, compute, memory, storage, and accelerated computing. Smaller instances such as t3.nano carry lower hourly rates, while larger instances and bare metal options like u-24tb1.112xlarge carry higher rates. You scale cost by selecting the instance that fits your workload and running hours.
Top-of-mind questions for buyers
What does the hourly software rate cover, and is it separate from AWS infrastructure charges?
The hourly rate covers the hardened operating system image license for the running instance. It is billed on top of your underlying AWS compute charges. You pay both: the software fee for this image and the EC2 charge for the instance you selected.
Am I charged the hourly software fee when my instance is stopped or paused?
The software fee meters running instance-hours. When an instance is fully stopped, the hourly software charge does not accrue. Note that stopped instances may still incur AWS storage fees for attached volumes, but those are separate from this image's software metering.
What is verified in this hardened image, and what stays my responsibility after deployment?
Verification covers the operating-system baseline as packaged for the release. Your applications, cloud account configuration, and any changes made after deployment fall outside that image-level scope. The verified release reported 74% of expected requirements passed across areas like logging, identity, and platform configuration.
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Vendor refund policy
At present, Citadel does not provide refunds. Billing will be only for the actual duration of instance use. Just like other Citadel offerings, our primary objective is to ensure complete satisfaction for all our customers. Should you need further assistance, please reach out to our team directly at support@citadelelement.com.
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Vendor terms and conditions
Upon subscribing to this product, you must acknowledge and agree to the terms and conditions outlined in the vendor's End User License Agreement (EULA).
Content disclaimer
Vendors are responsible for their product descriptions and other product content. AWS does not warrant that vendors' product descriptions or other product content are accurate, complete, reliable, current, or error-free.
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
Version release notes
Security patches and package updates (August 2026)
Additional details
Usage instructions
Connect over SSH using the key pair selected at launch. The default user is shown above. See the listing's usage instructions for full details.
Support is part of what you get with a Citadel image, and it comes from a US-based team that works on these builds every day. Email support@citadelpci.com with anything - choosing the right image, how the hardening behaves, patching and releases, evidence for a PCI DSS review, or a question you are not sure who else to ask. We read every message, and we would much rather you ask than guess. More about how we work with customers:
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.
This product has charges associated with it for hardening and maintenance. This Citadel VM is secured using 300+ open source security controls and validated using Citadel Audit.
This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for baseline security hardening, kernel performance tuning, weekly automated patch integrations, versatile storage support (Standard & LVM), and pre-integrated AWS cloud utilities.
This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for baseline security hardening, kernel performance tuning, weekly automated patch integrations, versatile storage support (Standard & LVM), and pre-integrated AWS cloud utilities.
This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for baseline security hardening, kernel performance tuning, weekly automated patch integrations, versatile storage support (Standard & LVM), and pre-integrated AWS cloud utilities.
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