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Macquarie Government and Macquarie Data Centres, part of Macquarie Telecom Group, have hosted Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to officially open the company’s Intellicentre 3 East hyperscale data centre in Sydney.
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As part of the event, the Prime Minister observed a threat hunt with Macquarie’s ‘cyber warriors’. The hunt involved exploring a government agency’s IT infrastructure – using a library of more than 4,000 threat intelligence playbooks – to look for patterns of compromise or vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cyber criminals.
The official opening marked the on-time, on-budget completion of the data centre in Macquarie’s Sydney Campus. The project received an initial investment of more than $85 million and supported over 1,200 construction, engineering, cyber security, and IT jobs throughout the COVID pandemic. The facility is designed to support government organisations, hyperscalers, global multinationals and Australian corporations.
Speaking at the event, the Prime Minister asserted that his government aims to provide the environment for the success of our data and digital businesses.
"It's Australian owned, it is made right here," the Prime Minister said.
"Particularly in a troubled world, especially from a data point of view where supply chains are frankly more about trust now than they are about efficiency or cost.
"When it comes to data security, you've got to be dealing with somebody you trust."
The official opening follows Macquarie’s billing commencement earlier this month of a multimillion-dollar contract with a leading global corporation for circa 10 megawatts (MW) of data centre capacity. The deal led Macquarie to increase its planned opening capacity for IC3 East. It also preceded the company unveiling plans to build another data centre – its largest ever facility – at the Macquarie Park Data Centre Campus. IC3 Super West will increase the campus’ overall capacity to 50MW.
The Prime Minister noted that Australia is one of the most trusted and certified when it comes to the data industry.
"Words like 'sovereign' really mean something and 'secure' really mean something," PM Morrison said.
"This is all helping us as a country achieve our goal of being a top 10 digital economy by 2030.
"We have a five-point plan to grow our economy and this is one of those points in that plan – it's about ensuring that we are enabling the investment, the technology, the infrastructure and the skills that drive that as well."
Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope said that IC3 East has the capability, capacity and scale to support Australian government organisations as they encounter increased cyber threats.
“The world has changed quite dramatically in recent years and particularly in recent months. This has had a direct impact on the level of cyber criminal activity which is landing on Australian shores,” Tudehope said.
“We’re proud to see the Prime Minister take such a personal interest in what we know to be one of the most important issues facing the nation. Macquarie is privileged to partner with more than 42 per cent of federal government agencies and personnel, protecting them against cyber threats through our secure, sovereign data centre campuses in Sydney and Canberra.”
Macquarie Data Centres’ group executive, David Hirst, added that the event showcased the importance of secure cloud and data centre infrastructure to power Australia’s digital economy.
“The government has consistently underscored the importance of cyber security and data sovereignty, including through the Cyber Security Strategy; decision for all government data to be stored in onshore certified strategic or certified assured data centres; and the Critical Infrastructure Bill, which formally recognised key data storage, telecommunications, and processing industries as Australian critical infrastructure,” Hirst said.
“We’re proud to support that vision by embedding security and sovereignty into the design and operation of our data centre campuses across Sydney and Canberra.”
IC3 East is built to the latest physical and cyber security standards essential to securely store and protect data in Australia. This includes federal government-level SCEC Zone 3 or higher security, ISO 27001, and SOC 2. It is staffed 24x7x365 by government-cleared engineers and incorporates ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety management) and ISO 14001 (environmental management) to meet modern business requirements.
[Related: CISA, FBI issue advisory against Russian state-sponsored cyber actors]
