Symantec opens $12m cybercrime centre in Sydney

The parliamentary secretary to the Federal minister for communications, Paul Fletcher, today opened Symantec's new expanded and unified Sydney office and security operations centre.

"I remember in the 1980s we were all worried about putting the floppy disk near the microwave oven," said Fletcher, the federal member for Bradfield. "IT security has come a long way since then."

The security operations centre doubles its capacity as a part of the $12 million renovation of Symantec's Kent St facilities in uptown Sydney. The upgrade also merges the vendor's two offices in the NSW capital.

"We now have the best office in Symantec globally," said Brenton Smith, managing director of the Pacific region.

Opening day also saw an event held for select customers and an evening function for partners that doubled as the introduction of new APJ senior vice president Adrian Jones to the Australian channel.

Jones said that the investment in Sydney is "another step forward" for the vendor. "We have recently announced changes to our technology portfolio, partner strategy and today we are announcing investment in our workplace facilities."

The revamped security operations centre provides additional capacity for "systems, people and sockets" to allow expansion of products and clientele, according to APJ director of managed security services, Peter Sparkes.

"We have 14 [security analysts] now in the SOC, but we want to be up to 22 in about 18 months' time," Sparkes said.

Cyber Security Group vice president Samir Kapuria, the executive in charge of security operations centres around the world, flew in from Boston for the unveiling. He said that Symantec has "the world's largest civilian cyber intelligence threat network" and this allowed the SOC to perform at a high level.

"We track about 4 trillion threat indicators from hundreds of millions of mobile devices, endpoints and servers across the globe and last year we identified 1 trillion security incidents," he said.

Symantec executives also spruiked the vendor's managed security products, saying that a ever-growing shortage in IT security talent in the global workforce means it makes sense for businesses to outsource their protection.