Australian Tax Office renews security deal with Macquarie

Macquarie Government, part of Macquarie Telecom Group, has announced it has renewed and extended its agreement with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to provide a range of data and cybersecurity services. 

The deal will see the ATO continue to leverage services, including Macquarie's Secure Internet Gateway (SIG), 24x7x365 Security Operations Centre (SOC), sovereign data centre, hyper-converged infrastructure, and cloud services. These services support the secure management of the connection between the ATO's IT environment and the internet and protect Australian organisations' and citizens' financial, personal and other sensitive data.

Since the initial agreement was signed in 2019, Macquarie has facilitated the migration of SIG services and supported the ATO's IT and security teams in relation to SIG services. This support includes monitoring digital events on the ATO's SIG and triage of targeted attacks by Macquarie's SOC.

For the ATO, Macquarie's SOC provides a full inspection of internet traffic flows, content, and images to meet ATO policies, the Government's Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) and Information Security Manual (ISM) controls.

In December, Macquarie Government, Australia's government cybersecurity specialist, also became the first company in Australia to have its cloud and data centre services "Certified Strategic" by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).

Macquarie Government provides SIG and other cybersecurity services to approximately 42% of the Federal Government based on staff headcount.

"We're proud to play a key role in keeping one of Australia's most fundamental government agencies secure, at a time when Australians are looking for greater assurance their critical government data and the institutions that store and protect it are fully secure," says Aidan Tudehope, Managing Director, Macquarie Government.

In growing its government cybersecurity capabilities, Macquarie Government has continued to invest in its infrastructure and service capabilities, including a significant focus on recruitment. As a result, the company has more than 220 security-cleared engineers servicing its clients. They are driving service innovation through virtual services gateways, enhanced cybersecurity tools and secure access service edge (SASE) security frameworks.

Macquarie Government has also significantly expanded its sovereign data centre campus in Canberra, opening the AU$17 million Intellicentre (IC) 5 data centre in 2021. The new facility is being built specifically for the government within Macquarie's existing Canberra Data Centre Campus. IC5 data centre campus will use the latest physical and virtual security and compliance credentials to manage government cloud workloads at the protected, secret and above levels.

Macquarie currently has five data centres in Australia, three in Sydney and two in Canberra, which the company calls Intellicentres. Before the recent IC5, IC4 was commissioned as a purpose-built wholesale data centre to support the Federal Government's gateway consolidation program. These two data centres are very safe and secure, with the company keeping their location on a need-to-know basis.

The development of Intellicentre 3 (IC3) will be the next step in creating the Macquarie Park Data Centre Campus. "Built in two phases, the exciting development will take our total capacity at Macquarie Park from 10MW to 50MW," says the company.