Key attributes include:
- Isolation – All aspects of Microsoft Azure Government’s hyperscale infrastructure, including the data center, hardware, network and software, are isolated to meet the unique compliance standards of the U.S. public sector. This isolation covers all physical, logical and network components of the service.
- Community – Azure Government is restricted to only a targeted set of government agencies and their solution providers, including federal, state, local, tribal and the Department of Defense.
- Security – Data centers are secured using physical, logical and procedural controls. Important controls include secured access control to the data center, second person screened escorts, aisle cameras, and secured cabling. All security controls are audited and logged.
- Screened personnel – Operations and support are performed by personnel who are United States persons, who have been background screened. These personnel are based in redundant Service Operating Centers (SOCs), which are greater than 500 miles apart.
- Continental United States – All customer data, content, and organizational data (both at rest and in transit); all hardware, networking and other physical infrastructure; and all personnel reside in the Continental United States (CONUS).
- Business continuity – Data centers are physically isolated from other cloud services and geographically distributed more than 500 miles apart. This enables geo-replication and integrity between locations that supports business continuity and disaster recovery.
- East Coast region – Azure Government has an East Coast region in order to be in close proximity to customers and to, provide efficient high speed connections to Washington D.C. and surrounding areas.
Microsoft first announced its Azure Government cloud in March 2014 and since then over one hundred government customers and solution providers have been testing it.