Australia’s Federal Government has recognised NEXTDC as a certified strategic hosting provider to secure sovereign data.
Certified strategic status is the highest level of data centre certification attainable and is only available to providers that allow the government to specify ownership and control conditions.
The hosting certification framework was developed to operationalise the principles outlined in the whole-of-government hosting strategy, and to support the secure management of government systems and data. The Framework is designed to assist agencies to mitigate against supply chain and data centre ownership risks and enable them to identify and source appropriate hosting and related services.
The new framework ensures increased security provisions to protect privacy and improve resilience, by assessing and certifying all direct and indirect providers of hosting and related data centre services to government.
“We applaud the Government’s decisive action around only partnering with leading Australian data centre services companies that are independently verified as being able to safeguard the escalating volumes of sensitive government held data,” said NEXTDC’s David Dzienciol.
According to Dzienciol, to better serve public sector customers, and to support the certification of its hyperscale cloud customers that supply the public sector, NEXTDC took the decision to seek the highest level of certification for its entire national data centre footprint (Brisbane B1 & B2, Sydney S1 & S2, Canberra C1, Melbourne M1 & M2, and Perth P1 & P2).
The recognition of compliance in alignment with the highest certification requirements for NEXTDC’s data centres assures federal, state, territory and local government organisations that NEXTDC has been independently assessed and approved by the DTA to deliver the highest standards in data centre security and data sovereignty.
As well as ensuring critical government data is retained onshore in certified data centres, this strategy requires government data only to be managed in cloud availability zones and by managed service providers who are verified as being able to deliver the requisite high operational standards and supply chain resilience required to support the storage of government data.
“With digital transformation and cloud migration accelerating rapidly right across the economy, data has become the most valuable business resource, and Government agencies manage some of the most sensitive information in existence,” Dzienciol said.
“The risks associated with data breaches caused by human error and malicious activity is evolving daily. We are proud to be one of very few data centre operators that are strategically positioned to achieve the highest level of certification under the Australian federal government’s hosting certification framework.”
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