Leonel Garciga, the U.S. Army’s chief information officer and a 2025 Wash100 awardee, has released a memorandum outlining the policy for using Cross Domain Solution as a Service, or CDSaaS, across the military branch.
What Is CDSaaS?
CDSaaS is a cloud computing-based platform that cloud service providers offer as a service to government organizations to facilitate the transfer of information across two or more different classification domains.
The transfer can be done from high-to-low, low-to-high or in any combination needed to meet mission requirements.
Policy Details
According to the memo published Jan. 31, all Army cloud cross domain solution, or CDS, requirements will be approved and managed through the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency Cloud Governance Committee, also known as ECMA CGC.
ECMA tenants will adhere to raise the bar, or RTB, requirements, and CGC will assess requests for specific critical missions or operational workloads for consideration for approval.
The document states that only ECMA will provide CDSaaS services for use by Army organizations and that no enterprise CDS offerings will be paid for or used without approval from the Army CIO.
Roles & Responsibilities of Army Officials
According to the memo, CGC will serve as the approval and governance committee for ECMA CDSaaS tenant requests to align with Army portfolio management.
ECMA will serve as the lead organization for all cloud Department of Defense Information Network-Army, or DoDIN-A, operations. It will have the sole responsibility of establishing all governance, maintenance, and approval for unit utilization of CDSaaS.
ECMA will also be responsible for providing guidance and support to CGC and the sole Army organization that can use reciprocity for CDSaaS operations.
The document tasks Army Cyber Command with providing cybersecurity service provider integration and monitoring efforts.
