Azure Government
Updates for building solutions across Microsoft's Clouds for Government
Latest posts
Announcing GPT-5.2 Availability in Azure for U.S. Government Secret and Top Secret Clouds
Today, we are excited to announce that GPT-5.2, Azure OpenAI’s newest frontier reasoning model, is available in Microsoft Azure for U.S. Government Secret and Top Secret cloud environments. This release marks another significant milestone in our mission to bring cutting edge AI capabilities to the nation’s most critical missions, securely, reliably, and at unprecedented speed. Frontier AI for the Nation’s Most Sensitive Workloads GPT-5.2 represents the next evolution of frontier level reasoning, planning, and problem solving. It brings improved contextual understanding, stronger multistep reasoning, and bet...
Unlocking New Possibilities: Microsoft Azure Hyperscale AI Computing with H200 GPUs Accelerates Secure AI Innovation in Azure for U.S. Government Secret and Top Secret
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries and redefine the boundaries of innovation, Microsoft is proud to announce a leap forward in secure, high-performance computing in our Secret and Top Secret clouds: the integration of NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs into Azure’s AI infrastructure. This advancement helps unlock unprecedented generative AI capabilities, large language models (LLMs), and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, while meeting the stringent security and compliance demands of government and regulated industries. Built for the Future of AI The NVIDIA H200 GPU is engineered...
NASA’s Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) Data Now Available on Microsoft’s Planetary Computer
NASA’s vast archive of Earth observation data has long been a cornerstone for scientific discovery, environmental monitoring, and global sustainability efforts. Now, Microsoft has made it even easier for researchers, developers, and decision-makers to access and utilize this critical resource. Through a collaboration with NASA, the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) dataset is now available on Microsoft Azure by using Microsoft’s Planetary Computer platform. Whether you’re a researcher looking to push the boundaries of climate science, an entrepreneur exploring new commercial applications, or a scientist ...
Azure OpenAI Service now authorized for all U.S. Government data classification levels
In the coming years, artificial intelligence will continue to be foundational to technical innovations for national security missions. Already, U.S. defense and intelligence organizations are using AI to enhance productivity, support decision making, and improve mission outcomes. Microsoft Azure is a backbone for this type of AI-driven work, supporting U.S. government missions with high resiliency, sophisticated capabilities, flexibility, and advanced security, designed to meet the stringent compliance requirements of the nation’s most sensitive data. Today, we are excited to share that Azure OpenAI Service ha...
Embracing Zero Trust: Never Trust, Always Verify
Microsoft's 2024 Digital Defense Report found that between July 2023 and July 2024, Microsoft customers faced an astounding 600 million attacks daily from both cybercriminals and nation-state actors. In this high-risk and rapidly evolving environment, individuals and organizations must not only strengthen digital defenses at every level but also foster a deep and enduring commitment to cybersecurity. Zero Trust offers a powerful and proactive architecture that redefines how organizations safeguard their data and systems. In 2021, the U.S. federal gov...
Successfully leveraging stakeholder feedback with Comment Analytics
Agencies in the U.S. federal government publish an average of 3,700 proposed rules yearly, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. With each proposed rule, agencies generally provide an opportunity for stakeholders and members of the public to submit comments before the rules are finalized. In some instances, thousands of comments are submitted, with no consistent government-wide process for intaking, analyzing and reporting the findings. A similar dynamic exists in the private sector, where organizations regularly solicit and analyze feedback and comments from customers to improve products ...
Unlocking new possibilities: Microsoft AI, database, and identity products receive authorization for Top Secret workloads
Microsoft’s leading AI capabilities are being used across industries to enhance data analysis, bolster security, and support key business priorities. Our U.S. Government customers and authorized partners consistently share that they are ready and eager to apply these same tools to serve their critical missions, and Microsoft is committed to delivering the breadth of our capabilities to them securely, responsibly and compliantly. These capabilities open new possibilities for government agencies to improve public services, streamline internal workflows, and support critical missions like disaster response and publi...
Azure OpenAI, including GPT-4o, Approved as a Service within the FedRAMP High Authorization for Azure Government
Editor’s note (September 3, 2024): this post has been updated to note that Azure OpenAI has been approved as a service within the DOD IL4 and IL5 Provisional Authorization for Azure Government by Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). As part of our ongoing effort to deliver the latest AI innovations to our government customers, our team is proud to announce several significant updates: Agencies requiring FedRAMP High Authorization are now able to access these leading AI capabilities within their Azure Government tenant, enabling secure and responsible access to the latest AI technologie...
Anticipating the future of physical systems design
Rising complexity, IP intensity and need for security of physical systems products requires a transformation in how to develop, manufacture and operate these systems. To meet time-to-market demands, software developers and hardware producers alike need optimized cloud + AI solutions that can provide higher levels of collaboration, higher protection and access to scalable computing resources, and the latest AI technologies. Additionally, government and industry require increasing validation of security and access controls to many physical systems that are key to commercial and national security. In March, Micro...
Microsoft AI Powering DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge
One of the most promising applications of advanced AI is its ability to help combat cyberattacks from enhanced threat intelligence to AI-powered remediation. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched the AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) that will bring together the foremost experts in AI and cybersecurity to develop innovative solutions to safeguard critical infrastructure from cyber threats. Microsoft is proud to support this challenge by providing the participating teams with access to the latest AI models in Microsoft Azure. Innovation with AI and cybersecurity is even more important for ...
Beyond the hype: Part 1, How trustworthy AI empowers US Government agencies
Large language models’ (LLM) ability to transform mission workflows for US Government agencies is revolutionary and adoption is now starting to accelerate. As agencies begin to leverage LLMs, they unlock capabilities that promise to streamline processes and drive innovation forward. It also means that there’s more to be done in the near term to support the deployment of LLM applications. With this great potential comes great responsibility. From a national security perspective, LLMs are essential for readiness and resilience. Adversaries have already invested heavily in this technology, employing AI to power d...
Supporting Federal Agencies in Their Implementation of the Executive Order on AI – Part 1
The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence (M-24-10) (the “Memo”), part of the President’s comprehensive strategy on AI, outlines a structured approach for federal agencies to leverage artificial intelligence responsibly. The Memo provides direction that establishes a governance framework, fosters responsible AI innovation, and implements important risk management protocols. Microsoft values the Memo’s guidance that enables agencies to implement AI safely and effectively in fulfilling their missions, is committed to supporting these initiatives, and offers agencies the ca...
Azure Modeling and Simulation Workbench now in public preview
Mujtaba Hamid, GM Product Management, Strategic Missions & Technologies, Microsoft Prashant Varshney, Head of Product, Azure MSWB, Strategic Missions & Technologies, Microsoft Designing a silicon chip, an aircraft engine, an autonomous system, running sub-surface simulation for oil drilling, and other complex engineering systems are processes that typically include thousands of functions to verify, complex system interactions to optimize and multiphysics simulations to validate manufacturability. The need for close collaboration of developers from different disciplines, software and IP partners and ...
Comprehensive Document Translation Solution
Background and Use Cases Many of our customers have a requirement to translate documents from a variety of languages into a common language to ensure their mission success. These documents can be in a variety of formats, with unique page layouts and styles, and they may contain images with embedded text essential for a complete understanding by the reader. In many scenarios, there are large numbers of documents that must be translated quickly and securely to ensure mission success. Below are some common use cases for government organizations requiring document translation: The C...
Azure OpenAI service is now available in Azure Government
In October, I shared Microsoft’s commitment to bring the latest advances in AI to support critical government needs and further drive innovation for mission critical workloads. I am thrilled to announce Azure OpenAI Service is now available in Azure Government joining a comprehensive set of existing AI Platform of services that include Azure AI Services (formerly Azure Cognitive Services), Azure Machine Learning and Azure AI Search to advance AI capabilities in government. Azure OpenAI Service in Azure Government enables agencies with stringent security and compliance requirements to utilize this industry-lead...
How Microsoft is helping the Space Force become a Digital Service
Space is increasingly becoming a contested environment as nation-states compete to control this latest frontier. The U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) is taking significant steps to modernize systems and capabilities in order to ensure service members have the best tools to protect and defend our interests in space. SSC recently renewed its partnership with Microsoft to develop the Integrated, Immersive, Intelligent Environment (I3E), a production follow-on to the Immersive Digital Facility (IDF) prototype successfully developed in 2023. I3E establishes an immersive environment to train, prepare, ...
Decoding AI: Part 8, Data governance and generative AI
Welcome to Part 8 of our Decoding AI: A government perspective learning series! In our previous blog, we re-introduced a technique that can help us achieve better boundary conditions and quality outputs: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with GAI. In this module, we wrap up with a culmination of all our learnings till date, and how they can benefit the US government and the public. We will also share some of the best practices and tips for using generative AI, and how to avoid or mitigate some of the potential risks or challenges. — Kent Cunningham, Miri Rodriguez, Siddhartha Chaturvedi Why generative AI ma...
Decoding AI: Part 7, Retrieval Augmented Generation with GAI
Welcome to Part 7 of our Decoding AI: A government perspective learning series! In our previous blog, we discussed how to create boundary conditions in generative AI, the topic on everybody’s mind, as we explore the boundaries (pardon the pun) of generative AI - the constraints or rules that guide the outputs of these technologies, and why they are essential for the US government. In this module, we re-introduce a technique that can help us achieve better boundary conditions and quality outputs: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with GAI. — Siddhartha Chaturvedi, Miri Rodriguez The topical relevance of RAG ...
Decoding AI: Part 6, Creating boundary conditions in generative AI
Welcome to Part 6 of our Decoding AI: A government perspective learning series! In our previous blog, we discussed the importance of trust in AI, especially for large language models and generative AI. In this module, we dive deeper into how to create boundary conditions in generative AI, the topic on everybody’s mind, as we explore the boundaries (pardon the pun) of Generative AI - the constraints or rules that guide the outputs of these technologies, and why they are essential for the US government. — Siddhartha Chaturvedi, Miri Rodriguez What are boundary conditions and why do they matter? Boundary condi...
Accelerating AUKUS: Securing Multilateral and Multiagency Collaboration
Public - Private partnerships are successful. After years of talking about the need for public-private partnerships, the war in Ukraine has stress-tested the system. Since the war’s beginning in February 2022, Microsoft security teams, working closely with Ukrainian government officials, US government cybersecurity staff and US private enterprises have identified and remediated a variety of cyber threat activities against Ukrainian networks.1 The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Centre (MSTIC) discovered wiper malware2 in more than a dozen Ukrainian networks. Microsoft subsequently alerted the Ukrainian g...
Decoding AI: Part 5, Navigating trust in the age of large language models and generative AI
Greetings and welcome to Part 5 of our Decoding AI: A government perspective learning series! Previously, we went through the expansive capabilities of multimodal AI, spanning sectors from agriculture to urban living. In this module, we pivot to a matter of paramount importance: Trust in AI, with a focus on large language models and generative AI. — Keith Bauer, T’Neil Walea, Miri Rodriguez, Siddhartha Chaturvedi The central role of trust in AI Trust is not a single feeling, but a complex and dynamic phenomenon. It shapes how we perceive and interact with the world around us, including the artificial AI tec...
Delivering Cutting-Edge AI Solutions to US Government
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform nearly every sector of the economy and society. For U.S. government agencies, the latest advances in AI offer a unique opportunity to optimize their operations, deliver better user experiences and enhance national security. Microsoft is innovating in AI to deliver technology for the public sector. As we embark on this new way to work, we are committed to delivering transformational AI innovations responsibly to drive government missions, aligned to the goals of the White House’s recent executive order for safe, secure and trustworthy AI. We began enab...
Decoding AI: Part 4, The age of multimodal AI
Welcome to Part 4 of our Decoding AI: A government perspective learning series! In our previous dialogue, we unraveled the complexities of semantic search and generative AI and how they are transforming public governance. In this module, let’s shift gears and focus on the dawn of a new AI era: multimodal sensing. This compelling advancement merges multiple sensory data—think vision, sound, text—into an insightful, unified whole data set. — Siddhartha Chaturvedi, Miri Rodriguez Making sense of different senses In our day-to-day lives, we seldom rely on just one sense to make decisions or understand our envir...
Decoding AI: Part 3, Making data speak human
Welcome back to Part 3 of our Decoding AI: A Government Perspective series. In our last installment, we explored the nuanced landscape of anomaly detection and how it intersects with generative AI in shaping the future of public governance. As promised, today's dialogue will pivot toward semantic search and its role in converting complex data into easily interpretable, actionable insights. – Siddhartha Chaturvedi, Miri Rodriguez Semantic search: A cognitive leap beyond keywords For a long time, traditional search engines have been revered for their impressive ability to sift through and parse millions of d...
Decoding AI: Part 2, From anomalies to action
Welcome to Part 2 of our Decoding AI: A Government Perspective learning series. In the previous module, we embarked on a fascinating journey into the world of generative AI. As we progress, our aim is to delve deeper into the ways AI can shape the future of federal processes and governance. Today, we will shed light on the indispensable role of learning patterns and anomalies, and their significance in the world of AI. – Miri Rodriguez, Siddhartha Chaturvedi How does AI think? Artificial intelligence finds patterns in a way similar to human cognition. In essence, AI learns from data by guessing the chances and...
Decoding AI: Part 1, Introduction to generative AI
Welcome to Part 1 of our Decoding AI: A government perspective learning series, where over the course of eight modules, you will learn about the emerging field of generative AI and what this technology can mean for government. This series will not only help you understand how generative AI can help increase your organization’s productivity, but also how it can be used to supercharge innovation in incredible new ways. Over the course of this series, we’ll be dissecting complex themes like AI education, public discourse, sensory perception & robotics, AI governance and more. And we’ll be interacting with you th...
Microsoft Azure OpenAI Approved as a Service within the FedRAMP High Authorization for Azure Commercial
Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service is now included within the US Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High Authorization for Azure Commercial. This Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO) within the existing FedRAMP High Azure Commercial environment was approved by the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board (JAB). This milestone follows our previously announced solution enabling Azure Government customers to access Azure OpenAI Service in the commercial environment. With this latest update, agencies requiring FedRAMP High can directly access Azure OpenAI from Azure commercial. Sign up here...