This product has charges associated with the pre-built hardening to the CIS Benchmarks™ and recurring maintenance. The CIS Hardened Images® are hardened in accordance with the associated CIS Benchmarks, an industry best practice for secure configuration. Reduce cost, time, and risk by building your AWS solution with CIS AMIs.
The CIS Hardened STIG Image on Ubuntu Linux Server 22.04 LTS is a pre-configured image built by the Center for Internet Security (CIS®) for use on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). It is a pre-configured, security-hardened image that aligns with the robust security recommendations, the CIS Benchmarks, making it easier for organizations to meet regulatory requirements.
Not only is this image pre-hardened to the CIS Benchmarks guidance, but it is also patched monthly in alignment with the updates from the software vendor.
Key Benefits
Enhanced Security: Mitigates risks like malware, denial of service, and authorization issues by following globally-recognized secure configuration guidance to support your cloud security posture management (CSPM) program.
Compliance Readiness: Helps your organization comply with PCI DSS, FedRAMP, DoD Cloud Computing SRG, FISMA, select NIST publications, and more.
Faster Deployment: Pre-configured according to CIS Benchmarks, allowing you to deploy secure virtual machine images.
Consistency Across Environments: Ensures consistent security configurations across development, testing, and production environments, reducing drift and compatibility risks.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers remediation efforts, reduces attack surface, and minimizes business loss from security incidents.
Easier Maintenance: Regular updates ensure that your systems are always in line with the latest security standards and software patches.
Guidance from the DoD Cloud Computing SRG indicates that CIS Benchmarks are an acceptable alternative when DISA STIGs are not available. DISA STIGs are configuration standards for DoD Information Assurance (IA) and IA-enabled devices/systems. Launching an image that is hardened according to the CIS STIG Benchmark recommendations provides the ability to easily implement CIS guidance and DISA STIG at once. No packages are installed on or removed from this image outside of those already present on the base image or as recommended in alignment with the corresponding CIS Benchmark recommendations.
To demonstrate conformance to the CIS Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS STIG Benchmark, industry-recognized hardening guidance, each image includes an HTML report from CIS Configuration Assessment Tool (CIS-CAT® Pro). Each CIS Hardened Image contains the following files:
Base_CIS-CAT_Report.html - this provides a report of CIS-CAT Pro run against the instance before any change is made by CIS (e.g., software updates, CIS hardening).
basevm.txt - this provides a list of the packages resident on the instance prior to any change being made by CIS (e.g., software updates, CIS hardening).
CIS-CAT_Report.html - this provides a report of CIS-CAT Pro run against the instance after the corresponding CIS Benchmark was applied to the image.
Exceptions.txt - this provides a list of recommendations that are not applied because the configuration of those recommendations may inhibit the use of this image in this CSP, require environment-specific expertise, or hinder the integration of this image with CSP services or extensions.
afterhardening.txt - this provides a list of packages resident on the instance after the corresponding CIS Benchmark was applied to the image.
These reports are located in /home/CIS_Hardened_Reports.
Hardened according to a Level 2 CIS Benchmark that is developed in a consensus-based process and that is accepted by government, business, industry, and academia.
Helps with compliance to PCI DSS, FedRAMP, DoD Cloud Computing SRG, FISMA, select NIST publications, and more.
Pre-configured to align with industry best practices that are developed and supported by CIS, this image has hardened account and local policies, firewall configuration, and computer-based and user-based administrative templates.
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 this hardened virtual machine image, billed per running instance. Pricing has one dimension: the EC2 instance type you choose to run it on. Each listed instance type carries its own hourly software rate. There are no tiers or feature packages to select. Rates scale with the size and family of the instance, so larger or specialized instances (compute, memory, storage, GPU, or high-performance types) cost more per hour. You add AWS infrastructure charges separately. Choose the instance that fits your workload, and billing follows your actual usage hours.
Top-of-mind questions for buyers
What am I actually paying for beyond the hourly instance rate shown in the table?
You pay the hourly software rate for the pre-hardened virtual machine image. This image is a virtual machine configured to the CIS Benchmarks security recommendations. AWS charges for the underlying instance, storage, and network are separate and appear on your AWS bill.
Am I charged the hourly software rate when my instance is stopped or paused?
The hourly software rate meters running time only. A fully stopped instance does not accrue software charges. Stopped instances may still incur AWS storage fees for attached volumes, but those are separate AWS charges, not the image software rate.
Why do rates differ across the instance types, and how do I pick one?
Each listed EC2 instance type carries its own hourly software rate. Rates track the instance family and size. Compute, memory, storage, GPU, and high-performance types run higher rates than smaller general-purpose ones. Pick the instance that matches your workload; billing follows the hours that instance runs.
www.cisecurity.org
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Vendor refund policy
Refunds through AWS are not available at this time. You will only be billed for actual time of instance use. As with all CIS security products, our aim is always 100 percent customer/member satisfaction.
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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
Monthly updates
Additional details
Usage instructions
No sensitive information supplied by customers will be stored outside this instance. No data encryption configuration is applicable to this instance. You can encrypt the instance EBS volume per standard EC2 processes. No programmatic system credentials and cryptographic keys are used by this instance. Launch the instance via the AWS Marketplace or EC2 console. Navigate to your Amazon EC2 console and verify that you're in the correct region. Choose instance and select your launched instance. Select the server to display your metadata page and choose the Status checks tab at the bottom of the page to review if your status checks passed or failed. Connect using SSH. Use ubuntu as the username. Immediately apply latest security updates to the instance.
Support
Vendor support
Questions, feedback, and support accessing CIS-developed AMIs is provided by contacting
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 the pre-built hardening to the CIS Benchmarks™ and recurring maintenance. The CIS Hardened Images® are hardened in accordance with the associated CIS Benchmarks, an industry best practice for secure configuration. Reduce cost, time, and risk by building your AWS solution with CIS AMIs.
This product has charges associated with the pre-built hardening to the CIS Benchmarks™ and recurring maintenance. The CIS Hardened Images® are hardened in accordance with the associated CIS Benchmarks, an industry best practice for secure configuration. Reduce cost, time, and risk by building your AWS solution with CIS AMIs.
This product has charges associated with the pre-built hardening to the CIS Benchmarks™ and recurring maintenance. The CIS Hardened Images® are hardened in accordance with the associated CIS Benchmarks, an industry best practice for secure configuration. Reduce cost, time, and risk by building your AWS solution with CIS AMIs.
This product has charges associated with the pre-built hardening to the CIS Benchmarks™ and recurring maintenance. The CIS Hardened Images® are hardened in accordance with the associated CIS Benchmarks, an industry best practice for secure configuration. Reduce cost, time, and risk by building your AWS solution with CIS AMIs.
This product has charges associated with the pre-built hardening to the CIS Benchmarks™ and recurring maintenance. The CIS Hardened Images® are hardened in accordance with the associated CIS Benchmarks, an industry best practice for secure configuration. Reduce cost, time, and risk by building your AWS solution with CIS AMIs.
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