DISA Announces a New Impact Level 5 Certification
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By
Frank Konkel
PTC Cloud Services joins an elite group of cloud offerings to meet some of the Defense Department’s most stringent security requirements.
The Defense Information Systems Agency granted a 12-month provisional authorization to PTC Cloud Services last week to host Impact Level 5 data—also known as the Pentagon’s most sensitive unclassified data.
The PTC Cloud Services’ solution “is a managed platform that offers clients web applications for product lifecycle management and service lifecycle management,” hosted in the company’s cloud infrastructure and third-party data centers, according to DISA.
These authorizations are key as the Defense Department turns to commercial providers for its cloud spending in fiscal 2019. Fourth estate agencies are moving data to the cloud—specifically milCloud 2.0—while the Pentagon is expected to award two major, multibillion-dollar cloud contracts—the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure and Defense Enterprise Office Solutions—later this year. Both JEDI and DEOS require IL5 to be awarded, and winning vendors must be able to reach IL6 after the awards.
The IL5 provisional authorization is the first for PTC Cloud Services and one of a handful to be granted the authorization by the Defense Department to host controlled unclassified information. Only one company, Amazon Web Services, has earned an Impact Level 6 authorization, which means it can host the Pentagon’s secret and top-secret classified data.
The other products to achieve IL5 requirements are:
- Amazon Web Services GovCloud
- General Dynamics Information Technology's milCloud 2.0
- IBM's SmartCloud for Government
- IBM's Cloud Managed Services for Government
- Microsoft Azure DoD
- Microsoft MS O365 vNext
- Oracle's Federal Managed Cloud Services