New Zealand Information Security Manual (NZISM) Azure Blueprint available for NZ government customers
Microsoft recognises that for many organisations, complying with regulation and required s
ecurity standards can be challenging. When operating in a strict compliance environment, like working in the public sector, it is imperative government agencies can integrate the mandated security standards into their cloud systems design and delivery quickly, effectively and confidently.
However, this process isn’t always straight forward. So, to help our public sector partners, we have worked with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to leverage our security template capabilities and design a series of blueprints that help integrate relevant security standards into their Azure cloud implementation approach.
The under-pinning security controls are defined in the New Zealand Information Security Manual (NZISM), ensuring the blueprints consider the processes and controls essential for the protection of all New Zealand government information, and IT systems and services. This new NZISM Azure blueprint and policy initiative is a great step forward, showcasing how Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud governance capabilities can be used by our public sector clients to assure themselves they are securing their Azure cloud environment in alignment with NZ government requirements.
Azure Blueprints can help speed the development and delivery of well-governed Azure subscriptions, support the design of environments that comply with the government’s information systems controls framework, scale to support production implementations for large-scale migrations, and improve the efficiency of the solution accreditation and risk assessment process.
Microsoft appreciates the government’s position is agnostic when it comes to cloud, however, this blueprint means that NZ public sector customers wanting to utilise the power of our Azure platform, can do so while saving time and resource on security compliance, because some of the work has been done for them.
As Microsoft NZ Managing Director, Vanessa Sorenson, recently stated, “this new Azure Blueprint should provide public sector organisations with confidence that they are making use of Azure in a well-governed and secure way, making cloud easier to embrace.”
Russell Craig is the National Technology Officer at Microsoft New Zealand.