Aegis9 and Australian Data Centres have announced a strategic partnership to provide customers access to a shared or dedicated cyber security operation centre, with stringent controls to assure both the security and reliability of the complete supply chain. The partnership will deliver Aegis9’s next-generation cyber security operations and platform hosted and managed by Australian Data Centres within its state-of-the-art secure data centre facility in Canberra.
“Aegis9 is thrilled to be part of such an exciting venture that brings together the key elements of security and sovereignty to protect critical data and services” Ben Aldridge, Co-Founder/CEO of Aegis9 said. “This initiative allows us to provide an end-to-end capability that can deliver scalable and comprehensive security solutions to Government, Private Industry and Critical Infrastructure. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be socialising our extensive capability roadmap, which is reflective of the thought leadership behind the design and build.”
The Cyber Security Operation Centre is being developed and managed by Aegis9 and will be available from a Zone 4 accredited (physical security) floor space within the Australian Data Centre facility. Australian Data Centre has reserved additional space to expand operations and accommodate multiple clients requiring their own dedicated secure compartmented spaces.
“Security is paramount to our customers and our offering includes both a Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) and a customer focused security accreditation and governance framework adaptable to the Government’s security framework that is consistent with existing policies and procedures.” Said Rob Kelly, Managing Director, Australian Data Centres. “An ongoing security management programme with cyclical compliance, assurance, and accreditation activities, such as penetration testing and IRAP assessments, will be implemented to give ongoing confidence that our hybrid and multi-cloud solution, and the systems it hosts, remain secure.”
The manned, operational Cyber Security Operation Centre will constantly monitor a customer’s cloud and on-premise environments, the clear and Dark Web for customer information and the global threat landscape and enable correlation between multiple cloud provider environments and on-premise networks for a single customer, while maintaining the required data segregation. It will provide a holistic view of the threat environment, including insider threat, and a coordinated response mechanism. The centre can integrate into existing operational centres, including ticketing back through ITSM tools.
“Cloud providers have different approaches to their security models and tools. This makes the overall security management for a multi-cloud provider architecture both complex and often cost prohibitive for Government Departments.” said Darryl Hoffman, Director of Strategy and Capability, Aegis9. “Our partnership mitigates the complexity by providing this as an embedded function at a cost-effective rate, delivering a proactive and forward leaning capability. The solution can constantly monitor a customer’s environment, respond to threats and enable security correlation between their on-premise networks and the cloud providers they have adopted.”
This partnership will allow ADC to address the parliamentary inquiry into cyber resilience, by offering ongoing analysis of cyber maturity and compliance through the provision of cyclical IRAP assessments, Hosting Certification Framework assessments, and penetration testing as standard for all customers.
“We took an instant decision to partner with ADC after we inspected their facility.” Ben Aldridge, Co-Founder/CEO of Aegis9 said. “ADC’s commitment to building and maintaining their facilities in partnership with well-regarded Canberra companies, who also bring decades of experience in the data centre industry, demonstrated their genuine commitment to a sovereign assured supply chain. This partnership is reflective of vision, intent, and strategic direction aligning between agile Australian owned companies, to not only provide a capability which is truly unique within the market, but also works toward plugging significant gaps in our national cyber capability. It’s very exciting to be a part of something so innovative, and to work alongside industry leaders has enabled the delivery of a sustainable ecosystem and capability we’re all immensely proud of – and the icing on the cake is that this is only the beginning”.
Aegis9 and ADC are both private, and wholly owned-and-operated Australian companies. They fully align to the conditions of the Certified Strategic Hosting Providercertification level as outlined in the new Hosting Certification Framework released by the Digital Transformation Agency on 1 March 2021.
This news follows the announcement earlier this month that Oracle and Australian Data Centres are working together to provide Sovereign Cloud Services to Government.
“We are excited to work with Australian Data Centres to continue building our strong relationship with government; offering choice, innovation and collaboration while providing cost savings for government and taxpayers,” said Cherie Ryan, vice president and Regional managing director ANZ, Oracle.
