Over 100 Azure services support PROTECTED Australian government data

Today Microsoft published an independent security assessment of 113 Microsoft Azure services for their suitability to handle official and PROTECTED Australian government information. This assessment, carried out under the Information Security Registered Assessor Program (IRAP), is now available for customers and partners to review and use as they plan for increasing the use of cloud in government.

This milestone significantly expands the ability of the Australian government to leverage Microsoft Azure to drive digital transformation. The expanded scope of this IRAP assessment includes cognitive services, machine learning, IoT, advanced cybersecurity, open source database management, and serverless and application development technologies. This enables the full range of innovation within Azure Australia to be utilized for government applications, further reinforcing our commitment to achieving the broadest range of accreditations and assurances to meet the needs of government customers.

This assurance is critical for customers such as the Victorian Government, using ICT shared services provider Cenitex in partnership with Canberra-based OOBE to deploy VicCloud Protect, a ground-breaking and highly secure service that enables its government customers to safely manage applications and data rated up to PROTECTED level.

“VicCloud Protect is a first for the Victorian Government and our customers can now confidently store their classified data in the cloud with peace of mind that the platform meets both the Australian Cyber Security Centre guidelines and the Victorian Protection Data Security Framework to handle Protected level information.” – Nigel Cadywould, Cenitex Service Delivery Director

This is just one of many examples of Australian governments and partners building on the secure foundations of Azure to build transformative solutions for government. Microsoft is one of the only global cloud providers to operate cloud regions in Canberra specifically designed and secured to meet the strict security compliance requirements of Australian government and national critical infrastructure, including:

• Data center facilities within CDC, a datacenter provider based in Canberra that specializes in government and national critical infrastructure and meets the stringent sovereignty and transparent ownership controls required by the Australian government’s hosting policy.
• Leading physical and personnel security within the Canberra facilities designed for the even higher requirements of handling secret government data.
• Direct connection within the data center to the federal government’s intragovernment communications network (ICON) for enhanced security and performance.
• Unmatched flexibility for colocation of critical systems in the same facilities as Microsoft Azure in Canberra and access to the ecosystem of solution providers deployed within CDC.

Microsoft delivers the Azure Australia Central regions in Canberra as the first and best home of Australian government data and applications. The assessment released today covers not just the Central regions , but addresses all regions of Microsoft Azure in Australia, including Australia East (Sydney) and Australia Southeast (Melbourne). Also, as Microsoft has introduced further capacity and capabilities into the Australia Central regions, we have streamlined the process for customers to deploy services into our Canberra regions. Customers no longer need to manually request access to deploy services to the Australia Central region and can now directly deploy from the portal.

Because the Australian Government has designed the IRAP program to follow a risk-based approach, each customer decides whether to operate that service at the PROTECTED level or lower. To assist customers with their authorization decision, Microsoft makes the IRAP assessment report and supporting documents available to customers and partners on an Australia-specific page of the Microsoft Service Trust Portal.

For government customers who want to get started building solutions for PROTECTED level data, we’ve published Australia PROTECTED Blueprint guidance with reference architectures for IaaS and PaaS web applications along with threat model and control implementation guidance. This Blueprint enables customers to more easily deploy Azure solutions suitable for processing, storage, and transmission of sensitive and official information classified up to and including PROTECTED.

Learn more about our latest IRAP assessment

• Our IRAP assessment report and supporting documents are available on the Australia-specific page of the Microsoft Service Trust Portal
• Find additional documents and configuration guidance for operating at PROTECTED on the Azure Australia Microsoft Docs page and the AU-PROTECTED Blueprints on the Service Trust Portal
• Learn more about the Australia Central and Australia Central 2 regions and CDC Data Centres

Source: Azure Blog Feed