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Microsoft Azure Government is First Commercial Cloud to Achieve DoD Impact Level 5 Provisional Authorization, General Availability of DoD Regions

Furthering our commitment to be the most trusted cloud for Government, today Microsoft is proud to announce two milestone achievements in support of the US Department of Defense.

Furthering our commitment to be the most trusted cloud for Government, today Microsoft is proud to announce two milestone achievements in support of the US Department of Defense.

Information Impact Level 5 DoD Provisional Authorization by the Defense Information Systems Agency

Azure Government is the first commercial cloud service to be awarded an Information Impact Level 5 DoD Provisional Authorization by the Defense Information Systems Agency. This provisional authorization allows all US Department of Defense (DoD) customers to leverage Azure Government for the most sensitive controlled unclassified information (CUI), including CUI of National Security Systems. 

DoD Authorizing Officials can use this Provisional Authorization as a baseline for input into their authorization decisions on behalf of mission owner systems using the Azure Government cloud DOD Region. 

This achievement is the result of the collective efforts of Microsoft, DISA and its mission partners to work through requirements pertaining to the adoption of cloud computing for infrastructure, platform and productivity across the DoD enterprise.

General Availability of DoD Regions

Information Impact Level 5 requires processing in dedicated infrastructure that ensures physical separation of DoD customers from non-DoD customers. Over the past few months, we ran a preview program with more than 50 customers across the Department of Defense, including all branches of the military, unified combatant commands and defense agencies.

We are thrilled to announce the general availability of the DOD Region to all validated DoD customers. Key services covering compute, storage, networking and database are available today with full service level agreements and dedicated Azure Government support.

Dave Milton, Chief Technology Officer for Permuta Technologies, a leading provider of business solutions tailored for the military affirmed the significance of the general availability of the Azure DoD regions, saying:

“Azure Government DOD Regions has given us the ability to deploy our SaaS offering, DefenseReady Cloud, to the US Department of Defense in a scalable, secure, and cost-effective environment. The mission-critical nature of DefenseReady Cloud requires high availability, compliance with DoD’s SRG Impact Level 5 requirements, and scalability to support our customers changing demand, with a flexible pricing structure that allow us to offer capability to large enterprises as well as local commands. With Azure Government DOD Region, we are now able to onboard a customer in weeks, not months, allowing for a time-to-value that is unparalleled when compared with on-premises or other government-sponsored options. Through our partnership, Microsoft provided direct access to product group engineers, compliance support, training, and other resources needed to bring our SaaS solution to DoD.”

These accomplishments and the commentary of our customers and partners further reinforce our commitment to, and the strength of, our long-standing partnership with the US Department of Defense. For more information on Microsoft Cloud for Government services with Information Impact Level 5 provision authorization visit the Microsoft in Government blog, and for more detail on the Information Impact Level 5 Provision authorization (including in-scope services), please visit our Microsoft Trust Center.

To get started today, customers and mission partners may request access to our Azure Government Trial program.