The unveiling follows Macquarie being listed this month as a Certified Strategic data centre providers by the Australian Government.
Australia’s Minister for Defence, The Hon. Peter Dutton MP, today officially unveiled Macquarie Data Centres’ Intellicentre 5 Bunker (IC5), highlighting it as critical infrastructure supporting Australia’s data sovereignty, national cyber security and digital skills development.
The IC5 Bunker data centre was completed on time and on budget during the pandemic. It is part of a wider A$200 million investment by Macquarie Data Centres into its sovereign Canberra and Sydney Data Centre Campuses. The facility provides a fully sovereign ecosystem in terms of supply chain, Australian Government security-cleared staff, data access and storage.
Built specifically to support government data, IC5 is IRAP and DISP accredited and is capable of housing up to Zone 5 top secret data.
The unveiling comes as cyber security becomes a bigger issue in Australia following a series of cyber-attacks which have damaged media, agriculture, energy and other sectors in recent months.
Speaking at the unveiling event Minister Dutton highlighted the importance of the nation’s critical infrastructure in bolstering Australia’s digital and cyber security defense capabilities.
“The need to secure data to protect Australian businesses and government has been a maturing conversation over the last few years. The threat is evolving. We know there is increasing investment in penetrating systems throughout the world. To meet that threat, the Systems of National Significance Legislation and the Securing of Critical Infrastructure Legislation are essential,” Minister Dutton said.
“Macquarie is a globally recognised leader in its field with a particular focus on data storage and protection services. In our current threat environment, the demand for those services can only increase.”
IC5 Bunker leverages the latest physical, virtual security and compliance credentials to manage highly classified government cloud workloads. The facility is considered by the Government as Critical Infrastructure, given it has been designed to store important government information. It has also recently been Certified Strategic under the Morrison Government’s Hosting Certification Framework, a measure of the trust Government places on the facility and the sovereign controls that are applicable to it.
