Macquarie Government, part of Macquarie Telecom, has secured accreditation as a "protected" cloud services provider to the federal government.
Currently the highest security level certification for cloud services approved by the Australian Signals Directorate on its Certified Cloud Services List, the accreditation means Macquarie Government’s Govzone Secure Cloud service can host government data classified up to the protected level.
The accreditation follows Macquarie Government becoming the first Australian cloud provider to be added to the ASD's CCSL when it was first announced in May 2015, for services deemed suitable to host data up the unclassified-DLM security level.
“The security of government ICT systems managing citizen’s data has never been under greater scrutiny as risks increase such as the recent ransomware attack, and as community awareness grows,” Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope said.
{loadposition peter}“At the same time, the federal government is determined to lift the performance of Government by driving digital transformation, a cornerstone of which is moving to modern, flexible models of processing, moving and storing information.”
Tudehope said Macquarie had “invested hugely in specialised infrastructure in our highly secure data centres in Canberra and Sydney, and in building a team of over 100 security cleared staff, all because we believe security is the foundation of Government digital transformation”.
“The need for ‘baked in’ security was made clear in the report on the eCensus failure, which recommended the certification of protected cloud services should be hastened to help government agencies move to safer information storage and management environments,” he said.
“As an Australian business continuing to invest in Canberra, we are proud to be the first scale cloud services providers to achieve ASD Protected status.”