Microsoft to launch top secret cloud
The company is waiting on government accreditation for the new top secret regions.
Microsoft announced a new classified cloud on Dec. 7, dubbed Azure Government Top Secret. The company is waiting on government accreditation for the new top secret regions, Tom Keane Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Azure Global, said in a Dec. 7 blog post.
As the winner of the $10 billion, 10-year Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, Microsoft is on the hook to deliver accredited secret and top secret cloud environments for the Department of Defense. The company garnered secret-level accreditation in March.
JEDI isn't the only game in town for Microsoft's classified capabilities, however. Microsoft has customers in law enforcement and in the intelligence community. Notably, Azure and Office 365 are available across the intelligence community via the ICITE (Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise) common platform through a joint enterprise licensing agreement with Dell, Inc.
Top secret accreditation will offer more capabilities to classified users and provide options for modernizing legacy systems, according to Keane's blog post. The company also is rolling out new tools to assist application developers and security managers.