Quest Software achieves IRAP assessed status for two platforms in Australia

Quest Software has achieved IRAP assessed status in Australia for two platforms - its Quest Trusted Data Management Platform and Quest Security Management Platform - giving government and highly regulated sector customers independent assurance that both meet the Australian Government's cybersecurity framework at the PROTECTED classification level.

The Infosec Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) is an independent third-party assessment process that evaluates technology platforms against the Australian Government's Information Security Manual (ISM), maintained by the Australian Signals Directorate.

The assessment covers both the Official and PROTECTED classification levels, which the company said are required by the large majority of Commonwealth agencies.

Without IRAP assessed status, agencies typically must conduct their own vendor assessment before procurement can proceed - a process Quest said can take close to a year and carry a significant, often six-figure, cost. By completing the assessment across both platforms, Quest said it removes that burden from the customer side of the table.

"Many of Australia's largest government agencies already run Quest Software technology in their on-premises environments for Active Directory security monitoring, change auditing, recovery, and governance," said Richard Kulkarni, head of APAC at Quest Software.

"This IRAP assessed status doesn't introduce Quest to government; rather it extends a relationship that already exists into hybrid and cloud-first territory, with independent assurance attached."

Kulkarni added that agency modernisation programmes rarely follow a clean migration path.

"It looks like Active Directory and Entra ID modernisation running alongside Machinery of Government changes, cybersecurity uplift programs, and legacy platform retirement - often at the same time - with strict governance requirements and close to zero tolerance for downtime," he said.

The Quest Security Management Platform covers identity threat detection and response, privileged access oversight, change auditing and automated recovery for both human and non-human identities.

Quest said the platform supports Essential Eight alignment and a Zero Trust posture, with the IRAP assessment confirming independent verification against the ISM's identity and access management controls.

The Quest Trusted Data Management Platform is designed to help agencies discover, govern and catalogue data and convert it into governed, reusable data products.

The platform's Automated Data Product Factory converts raw, siloed datasets into data products with lineage, ownership and trust scoring built in - an approach Quest said allows agencies to pursue AI and analytics use cases without compromising data sovereignty or classification requirements.