Veterans Affairs issues FedRAMP High ATO for Microsoft Azure Government

Matt Rathbun

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the US government’s largest civilian agency, has issued a FedRAMP High Authority to Operate (ATO) for Microsoft Azure Government. This validates that the Microsoft Azure Government cloud meets all security and compliance standards necessary to handle VA’s most sensitive data, to include PII and PHI workloads.

The FedRAMP High ATO for Azure Government is a critical next step as the VA readies to leverage the cloud to modernize services for veterans around the world. The High compliance standard coverage of sensitive data including PII and PHI along with VA’s high-speed dedicated network connections to the Microsoft Cloud will enable VA to fully embrace the government’s Cloud First initiative. This brings the potential to serve veterans directly from applications hosted in the cloud.

“We are proud that VA has chosen Microsoft to help them with initiatives to modernize and consolidate their data centers. With the acceptance of the Azure Government FedRAMP High ATO, this demonstrates VA’s leadership in embracing the cloud beyond moderate data systems and allows VA to serve veterans around the world with innovative solutions powered by the cloud,” said Susie Adams, CTO , Federal, Microsoft.

An example of how the FedRAMP High Agency ATO might ultimately enable innovation at VA is the work being done with the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) to validate VA’s electronic healthcare record system, VistA, in Azure Government.

OSEHRA is an industry consortium dedicated to making open source technologies, like VistA, widely available. OSEHRA members are presently bringing up pilot instances of VistA in the Microsoft Azure Government cloud.

According to Seong Ki Mun, CEO of OSEHRA, “With Azure Government, our members will be able to test their innovations at scale in a cloud that meets the stringent requirements of the VA. We believe this will lead to an acceleration in the work on VistA and next generation technologies while serving our veterans.”

The Azure Government High ATO will also allow VA to build solutions using true platform-as-a-service and advanced service components including:

  • Azure Web Apps
  • Application Gateway
  • Azure Active Directory
  • Media Services
  • Power BI
  • Azure SQL Database
  • Redis Cache

In addition to an Agency FedRAMP High ATO from VA, Microsoft Azure Government has also received a FedRAMP High P-ATO from the Joint Authorization Board (JAB). Microsoft Azure Government leads the industry with 32 FedRAMP-approved services spanning both infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings. A complete list of the Azure services covered under the Azure Government FedRAMP High ATO can be found by visiting the Microsoft Trust Center.

Microsoft is committed to providing the most trusted, comprehensive cloud for mission-critical workloads so that our nearly 6 million government users across 7,000-plus federal, state and local organizations can achieve more in carrying out their mission-critical workloads. Please visit:

We welcome your comments and suggestions to help us continually improve your Azure Government experience. To stay up to date on all things Azure Government, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and to receive emails, click “Subscribe by Email!” on the Azure Government Blog. To experience the power of Azure Government for your organization, sign up for an Azure Government Trial.

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