If you took a look at Microsoft’s recent government contract announcements and felt like you’re seeing double–well, you wouldn’t be wrong. Azure Government recently received two new FedRAMP certifications from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Air Force. As of Jan. 24, Azure Government now has a FedRAMP High ATO from ICE and a Level-4 ATO for the Air Force’s common computing environment.
Border Patrol:
With the FedRAMP High ATO, Azure Government can now store and process ICE’s most sensitive unclassified data. Microsoft partnered with ICE to use deep learning capabilities for facial recognition and processing data on edge devices – useful for ICE, as it operates 400 offices stateside and in 46 foreign countries.
“The facial [recognition] is very interesting because cognitive [computing] with a neural network in cloud allows someone who’s not a data scientist, not even a technology person to begin providing feedback and making this thing very smart very, very quickly,” Keane said.
As with most other Federal agencies, ICE is currently looking to modernize outdated systems and implement new technologies that help the agency with its workload.
“ICE’s decision to accelerate IT modernization using Azure Government will help them innovate faster, while reducing the burden of legacy IT,” said Keane in a blog post. “The agency is currently implementing transformative technologies for homeland security and public safety, and we’re proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud.”
Fly Boys:
The Air Force is also looking to lift off its modernization with cloud services. And, by granting Azure a Level-4 ATO the Air Force provides Azure with controlled unclassified data wings within the Common Computing Environment architecture.
The Air Force will use Microsoft’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering to innovate more rapidly and cut time monitoring and maintaining its virtual infrastructure.
“We’re excited to see the U.S. Air Force building a cloud environment that can support future innovation and leapfrogging more traditional cloud migration strategies,” Keane said. “By choosing a PaaS and shared services strategy for IT modernization, [it has] taken the accelerated path to reinventing [its] capabilities.”
Doubling down on its government cloud commitment, it’s ATO ATO for Microsoft.
