HUNTSVILLE — Summit 7 has become the first defense industrial base-focused partner to leverage Microsoft’s Azure Government Secret to handle sensitive data on behalf of the Department of Defense, the Huntsville-based company announced.

Summit 7 is the only Azure-focused managed service provider permitted to sell Azure Government Secret licensing.

“Azure Government Secret provides our customers the much-needed ability to host classified data in Microsoft’s Secret cloud, therefore leveraging the Microsoft cloud technologies that they already know and trust,” said Ben Curry, Summit 7 CTO. “It will give our clients a clear path to migrate classified data from expensive and outdated legacy datacenters and on-premises SCIFs to a safe and secure cloud platform.

“Leveraging Azure to build solutions for our customers is what we do best, and this addition directly impacts the portfolio and future offerings of Summit 7.”

Azure Government Secret is the only classified cloud service offering to have received the highest possible DoD IL6 PA at the High Confidentiality, High Integrity, and Customer-determined Availability information categorization.

The announcement of this mission-critical cloud will provide aerospace and defense contractors handling highly sensitive data with the ability to continue to protect the U.S. warfighter while maintaining security and compliance with current federal cyber mandates.

“We’ve been preparing for this announcement for a very long time,” said Scott Edwards, CEO of Summit 7. “Summit 7 has acquired over 700 clients in the DIB, many of which need Azure Government to protect CUI, ITAR, and other sensitive data.

“The ability to provide Azure Government Secret to our government customers will allow them to continue to innovate, transform, and further protect the integrity of the United States front line.”