DoD Impact Levels (IL4 / IL5 / IL6)

Department of Defense Impact Levels define cloud service authorization tiers for DoD workloads. IL5 covers Controlled Unclassified Information; IL6 covers classified Secret information.

The DoD SRG and Impact Levels

The DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (CC SRG) defines four Impact Levels for cloud workloads. IL2 (low confidentiality, non-CUI) builds on FedRAMP Moderate. IL4 (CUI, mission-essential) builds on FedRAMP Moderate plus additional DoD requirements. IL5 (CUI, higher impact, including National Security Systems below Secret) builds on FedRAMP High plus DoD-specific additions. IL6 (classified up to Secret) requires SIPRNet-isolated infrastructure and cleared personnel.

Practical IL5 / IL6 access

AWS GovCloud (US), Azure Government, and Google Cloud Assured Workloads carry IL5 authorizations for various services. IL6 authorizations are far rarer; AWS Secret Region and Azure Government Secret are the primary commercial-providers, accessible only to cleared customers with appropriate contract vehicles. For an AI vendor to operate at IL5, it must deploy in an IL5-authorized region, undergo DISA assessment, and meet the additional DoD requirements (US-persons-only access, restricted-territory hosting, additional logging).

AI vendor considerations

Most commercial AI vendors will not pursue IL5 or IL6 directly because of the cost and operational restrictions (US-persons-only engineering teams, cleared SREs for IL6). The common path for DoD adoption is via an integrator or system integrator who fields a tenant of the AI vendor's product within their own IL5 environment, with the underlying foundation model accessed via a private endpoint or air-gapped deployment. AI procurement at IL5/IL6 is a small market with specialized players; buyers should not assume a commercial SOC 2 vendor can sell into it.