Microsoft meets Department of Defense cloud standards with Office 365 compliance service

Kit McDonald

The Microsoft Office 365 team announced today that their service for the U.S. Government Cloud has now met Security Requirement Guidelines. The SRG Level 4 and Level 5 controllers are now available to defense departments and organizations big and small that deal with Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Meeting the requirements for L5 data is quite the achievement for Microsoft who is the only commercial cloud provider that has such a high-security clearance.

This will let the Department of Defense employees access everything from Office 365 that they could need. Likewise, it’ll work across devices and receive quick over the air updates to stay protected.

Only departments that have clearance can access the Office 365 U.S. Government Cloud service. Probably one of the more secure cloud services available currently, it has physical and software layers of protection to keep all the data safe.

According to their Enterprise blog released earlier, both Office 365 U.S. Government Defense and Azure Government will have physically separated versions created for the Department of Defense by the end of the year. Bob David will be giving more detail about the new compliance service at the Microsoft Government Cloud Forum in Washington D.C. next week.

As Vice President for Office 365, Ron Markezich stated, not all clouds are created equal.