DOD's Commercial Virtual Remote Environment Officially Sunsets

The Defense Department’s interim solution that supported collaboration via Microsoft Teams during the pandemic has officially expired, according to Defense Information Systems Agency officials. 

Caroline Bean, the DISA program director for the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions, or DEOS, project that supplants and expands upon the interim solution, provided updates on DEOS during a Defense Systems and FCW webinar on Tuesday. Bean said the expiration of the Commercial Virtual Remote environment is not the end of the capabilities it provided. 

“There are capabilities, there are enduring capabilities and things that we've stood up in order to take over what CVR was providing the department,” Bean said. “So really, really glad to see those CVR users, folks who have already been on the [Impact Level 5] and using those today so it's exciting to see that transition.”

The capabilities under the DEOS contract function at a higher level of security than what was available under CVR, which operated at Impact Level 2, which allows for the storage and exchange of non-classified, uncontrolled information. DEOS works at Impact Level 5, which supports controlled unclassified information and unclassified national security systems. 

Bean also provided updated DOD 365 migration numbers: To date, DISA has moved over more than 70,000 mailboxes and 189,000 hybrid users who are using DOD 365 but who have not yet had their mailboxes migrated. 

“We wanted to ensure that all of the agencies and combatant commands will not be homeless after today, and so we wanted to make sure that we've given them the Teams hybrid and that was kind of a stopgap, just to ensure that they're in there, they're still able to collaborate and chat while we continue to move their mailboxes from on-prem into the cloud,” Bean said.