Microsoft has this week announced Office 365 Government Secret, a new version of its cloud productivity suite. In a blog post, the company describes the product as a software-as-a-service that will offer bespoke functionality for U.S. federal agencies. It will be available by mid-2022, although will likely begin as a preview.
“Office 365 Government Secret which is currently in government review pending accreditation and targeting availability starting mid-2022. This environment is built to support the US Federal Civilian, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and US government partners working within the Secret enclave with our best-in-class software as a service (SaaS) capabilities.”
Of course, the big difference here compared to regular Office 365 is compliance and security specifically for use in government agencies. For example, Office 365 Government Secret supports Impact Level 6 (IL6) work.
This means classified/secret data can be stored without being compromised. Furthermore, IL6 support allows the data to “only be processed in a DoD private/community or Federal government community cloud.”
Features
Microsoft is also leveraging dedicated datacenter infrastructure to process and store government data. The company describes this as “self-contained,” so it is closed and specifically for Government Secret customers. IL6 workloads on Office 365 are separate from non-DoD data.
Furthermore, government agencies have access to Microsoft ExpressRoute, a solution for private internet.
“Governments face many challenges in today’s globally connected workspaces, including increasing employee engagement and productivity with the latest tools, securing and controlling sensitive data, and managing multiple applications, devices, and workloads,” Microsoft adds.
Office 365 Government Secret will sit alongside the company’s existing Government Secret products, including Azure Top Secret and Government Secret on the cloud.
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