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 public health innovations.  

Today, I am excited to share that 26 additional products in Microsoft’s Azure for U.S. Government Top Secret cloud have been authorized to operate in accordance with Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 503, including Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Machine Learning. These authorizations are another step forward in our commitment to deliver AI-enabled capabilities to U.S. Government customers. 

Access best-in-class AI capabilities with Azure AI   

With today’s authorizations, the same best-in-class AI capabilities available to commercial customers can be leveraged in accordance with ICD 503 by U.S. Government agencies and authorized partners across the defense and intelligence communities. 

Among the authorized services is Azure OpenAI, which allows agencies and authorized partners operating in Microsoft’s Azure Government Top Secret cloud to benefit from multimodal generative AI models, such as GPT4-o, while meeting the rigorous security and compliance requirements necessary for the nation’s most sensitive data. Authorized users can easily access and integrate Azure OpenAI Service and further ground it on their data for more specialized and accurate intelligence. 

With these authorizations, national security customers can realize the benefits of generative AI, including: 

Enhanced productivity: Reduce time consuming tasks and free up team members to focus on higher value and more satisfying work. 

Augmented cognition: Expedite the task of combing through vast amounts of data to pull insights and interpret recommendations through co-reasoning with AI. 

Accelerated discovery and analysis: Recognize patterns and anomalies in code to detect possible vulnerabilities for analyst review, triage open-source events, and better understand and simulate complex situations. 

Just as customers operating in any Azure environment, customers using Azure OpenAI in the Azure Government Top Secret environment do so with the knowledge that their data remains secure. Proprietary information, from prompts to core data sets, remains within the boundary of Azure Government Top Secret. Prompts (inputs) and completions (outputs), embeddings, and training data are: 

• Not available to other customers 

• Not available to OpenAI nor used to train other models 

• Not used to improve any Microsoft or third-party products or services 

• Not used to fine-tune Azure OpenAI models for your use in your resource unless you chose to fine-tune models with your own training data 

In other words, your data is your data.   

Finally, while Microsoft is committed to providing industry-leading large language models from OpenAI, we also recognize that some mission requirements benefit from other models. Now, Azure Machine Learning is also authorized to operate in accordance with ICD 503, allowing users to train, deploy, and manage open-source models – including open-sourced foundation models. Customers can also use Azure Machine Learning to bring/build their own large language models.    

Bringing Microsoft capabilities together to do more on Azure  

Along with Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning, 24 additional Microsoft products have received authorization to operate in accordance with ICD 503, including: 

• Databases: Azure Database for PostegreSQL and Azure Database Migration Service  

• Identity: Microsoft Entra Domain Services  

• Analytics: Microsoft Graph 

• Insights and Reporting: Power BI 

These authorizations allow customers to access and easily integrate best-in-class data management, security, analytics, and reporting capabilities. Customers can bring these capabilities together uniquely on Microsoft’s Azure Government Top Secret cloud, supporting more informed decision making to deliver mission outcomes.  

To get started with the newly authorized products now available in Azure for U.S. Government Top Secret, please contact your Microsoft Account Team. Visit Azure for U.S. Government to learn how to do more for your mission with Microsoft Azure.