Dive Brief:

• The Air Force is making progress in its efforts to migrate of 550,000 Air Force users to Microsoft’s Office 365, according to FedScoop.
• In January, the Air Force will start with a 68,000-user rollout to Office 365, including SharePoint, Skype, email and storage, according to Air Force deputy CIO Bill Marion.
• The project is one of many recent Air Force efforts to migrate legacy IT to the cloud, Marion said.

Dive Insight:

Scale and security were huge concerns for the Air Force while upgrading. The federal government has been widely criticized for its lack of adequate cybersecurity and moving to cloud services can help with that.

In recent years, the government has suffered large-scale breaches at the Office of Personnel Management and the IRS, which have resulted in huge data losses. An April study by security risk benchmarking startup SecurityScorecard found U.S. federal, state and local government agencies rank lowest in cybersecurity when compared to the private sector.

Partnering with the private sector helped his agency manage some those challenges, Marion said. The federal government is increasingly looking to private sector partners to help it upgrade its legacy technology for the digital age.