Microsoft launches special Office 365 bundle with maximum security

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An extra-secure version of Office 365

Microsoft Office
(Image credit: Shutterstock / monticello)

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 modern 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”.

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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. 

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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.

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.