THE Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has formally certified 50 Microsoft cloud services across Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Office 365, for inclusion on the ASD Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL).
Australian Signals Directorate is an Australian government foreign intelligence collection agency responsible for foreign signals intelligence and information security. The principal functions of ASD are to collect and disseminate foreign signals intelligence (SIGINT) and to provide information security products and services to the Australian Government and Australian Defence Force (ADF), its foreign partners and militaries.
The ASD certification means that Australian hospitals, educators and government agencies at federal, state and local level can all take advantage of sophisticated capabilities like machine learning and analytics, like internet-of-things, like advanced threat protection – all in the cloud – and know those services are verified and certified by Australian government.
Australian organisations already taking advantage of this include The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection, Bendigo Hospital and VICSES. Additionally, Microsoft cloud is allowing Australian software developers, RecordPoint, Gruntify and DoseMe, to launch onto the world stage.
In 2015, Microsoft became the first hyperscale cloud provider to gain certification by the Australian Signals Directorate for services that span Infrastructure as a Service, Platform-as-a-Service and Productivity-as-a-Service. At that time, 6 Azure services and 4 Office 365 services were certified to handle information that is Unclassified with sensitivity markings like ‘For-Official-Use-Only’ or ‘In-Confidence’. Subsequently, Microsoft Dynamics CRM was added to that list. ♦
