In its announcement, Microsoft says Azure Government Top Secret is gaining accreditation with help from the U.S. government. The release build of the service was sent out on Monday (Dec. 7). Microsoft says quick development and preparation for accreditation is possible because of the synergy across Azure services: “The broad range of services will meet the demand for greater agility in the classified space, including the need to gain deeper insights from data sourced from any location as well as the need to enable the rapid expansion of remote work. “Additionally, mission owners will benefit from greater choice in modernizing legacy systems, with a secure cloud platform that works on open standards and open frameworks with tools that work across a wide range of skill levels, from business analysts to developers to data scientists.” These new Azure regions bring the same abilities as standard Azure regions, albeit with protection for top secret data.
Azure Government Secret Features
At the same time, Microsoft is bringing new features to its existing Azure Government Secret service. Customers of this cloud tier includes law enforcement and the Department of Defense. In terms of the DoD, the service has Impact Level 6 and Intelligent Community Directive 503 compliance. Microsoft says its Windows Virtual Desktop tool is now available to organizations using Azure Government Secret. Availability Zones are also coming to the Azure Government platform. These zones allow customers to manage datacenter failures by isolating their own system.
