Microsoft launches special Office 365 bundle for maximum security
Microsoft has announced it will launch a new version of its Office 365 productivity bundle, designed specifically for government and intelligence agencies.
The tailor-made collaboration suite, called Office 365 Government Secret, is currently pending accreditation and should be available by mid-2022.
Announcing the news in a blog post, Microsoft CVP Paul Lorimer noted that today’s governments face many challenges, “including increasing employee engagement and productivity with the latest tools, securing and controlling sensitive data, and managing multiple applications, devices, and workloads”.
Add in a heightened demand for security and you end up with a major market in need of “secure, productive, and efficient cloud options”.
We’re looking at how our readers use VPNs with different devices so we can improve our content and offer better advice. This survey shouldn’t take more than 60 seconds of your time, and entrants from the UK and US will have the chance to enter a draw for a £100 Amazon gift card (or equivalent in USD). Thank you for taking part.
Supporting government agencies
Office 365 Government Secret is built to support the US Federal Civilian, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and US government partners working within the Secret enclave, Lorimer added.
“With the launch of this new environment supporting Impact Level 6 (IL6), we’re adding to the comprehensive set of Office 365 Government cloud offerings to help meet the full spectrum of government data needs.”
This new productivity suite will run the latest enterprise-grade Office 365 Government productivity, security, compliance, and collaboration applications, it was added.
This is not the first time Microsoft has built custom solutions exclusively for government agencies. In August last year, the company announced the general availability of Azure Government Secret and Top Secret clouds.
Launched with more than 60 initial services (with more in the pipeline), the product was built to “accelerate the delivery of national security workloads classified at the US Top Secret level”. Microsoft also has more than 73 services under Azure Government Secret.
Those that plan to deploy Office 365 Secret environment should engage with their onboarding teams, the company said, in order to be ready when the final authorization is given.
Check out our list of the best office software right now
