US defense department grants accreditation for Microsoft Azure, Office 365

New York, Jan 14 (IANS) Owing to the Microsofts commitment in providing government customers the most complete, trusted and secure Cloud results, the US Department of Defense granted accreditation for Azure and Office 365 to handle controlled unclassified information (CUI).

"Raising the bar in #GovCloud compliance and security, @Microsoft achieves @DeptofDefense Level 5 P-ATO," tweeted Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation.

By gaining the DOD's Level 5 Provisional Authority (PA) for the Department of Defense (DOD) regions of Microsoft Azure government and Office 365 US government defense, Microsoft becomes the first and only commercial Cloud provider to offer an exclusive DOD Cloud that is L5-approved for infrastructure, platform and productivity services.

"The DOD L5 authorisation will enable customers to build applications that maintain CUI data requiring a higher level of protection than L4, as deemed necessary by the information owner, public law or other government regulations," said Curt Kolcun, Vice President, US Public Sector, Microsoft Corporation, in a statement.

The DOD L5 authorisation will allow customers to gain unprecedented data-access controls, advanced threat protection and unified IT management.

"To date, we have received widespread interest in our new Level 5 capabilities from across the US DOD, including all branches of the military, unified combatant commands and defense agencies. Additionally, four DOD entities, such as the Defense Logistics Agency and the US Air Force, have already committed to use Office 365 US Government Defense," added Kolcun.