The Department of the Navy is moving to individual, dedicated Microsoft 365 environments to improve its identity, credentialing and access management (ICAM) efforts.

Navy Department CIO Aaron Weis announced the move, saying the DON shall establish single service Microsoft 365 cloud tenancy; one each for the Navy and Secretariat and the Marine Corps.

He added that using a dedicated Microsoft 365 cloud is “the most expeditious way” to account for users. Also, single tenancy helps in reducing cost and complexity, enabling effective command and control, and increasing the efficiency of federation management with external DON tenants.

Weis also said that the move will allow for future collaboration and productivity services across multiple networks.

The move is critical as single directory management for the Navy and Marine Corps is expected to allow a reduction to individual aliases, and move the DON closer to “one email for life”.

“Directory management tools can also serve as a source of identity management for applications re-factoring for cloud that are interested in flexible access management and single sign-on. Starting with these capabilities will allow the DON to clean up identity, and to learn and evolve as our understanding grows,” explained Weis.