The Australian Signals Directorate has formally certified 40 Microsoft Azure and Office 365 services for inclusion on its ASD Certified Cloud Services List, which Microsoft says can be leveraged by Australian and New Zealand government agencies.

The list identifies cloud services that have successfully completed an assessment by the Australian Information Security Registered Assessor, and provides an assurance to public sector customers that the approved services have appropriate and effective security controls in place for processing, storing and transmission of unclassified, sensitive data.

Microsoft was previously certified for six Azure services and four Office 365 services, and Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft says the new certifications greatly expand the range of services government, healthcare and education organisations can confidently use to enable their digital transformation.

The certifications cover the core services appropriate for infrastructure and applications in the hyperscale cloud, including Azure Log Analytics, ExpressRoute and Azure Security Centre.

Included in the new certifications are Azure Machine learning, Azure Internet of Things Hub and Azure Application Services. Within Office 365 services including those for voice communications, cloud PBX, email, information protection and collaboration have also received certification at the unclassified DLM level.

James Kavanagh, Microsoft national technology officer, says “We are building th emost open platform for innovation, a platform that is trusted and assured to Australian needs.