GCC High

Government Community Cloud High (GCC High) is Microsoft's cloud environment specifically designed for U.S. defense, intelligence, and federal customers handling Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) data, and other regulated information. It is FedRAMP High authorized and physically isolated from Microsoft's commercial and standard government clouds.

For defense contractors using Microsoft 365 (Office, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive), GCC High is the supported destination for any environment that handles CUI. Standard commercial M365 and the lower-tier GCC environment do not meet the requirements for CUI handling under DFARS 252.204-7012.

Migrating to GCC High is a significant project — pricing is higher, feature parity with commercial M365 lags by months, and licensing is restricted to verified DoD-related entities. Most contractors handling CUI in their email and document collaboration environment end up on GCC High.