John Sherman, principal deputy chief information officer at the Department of Defense (DoD), said DoD has moved to extend to June 2021 the use of the commercial virtual remote environment to support employees who are teleworking, DoD News reported Wednesday.
The Pentagon created the CVR environment in March 2020 to support remote employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sherman said Wednesday during the Cybercon 2020 conference that over a million users are adopting the capability to perform calls, teaming and video conferences.
Sherman noted that DoD is working on a new Office 365-based platform that would replace CVR by June and operate at Impact Level 5, which covers controlled unclassified information and mission critical data.
“We are currently working on a more enduring Office 365-based capability,” he said. “CVR is what we call ‘impact level two’ or IL2…We’re moving to an IL5 solution. IL2 was fine for where we [are] in telework. But we know we need a more enduring solution that keeps the same functionality of CVR, which allows us to talk to people at IL2, talk to people not on the Department of Defense Information Network.”
