Sliced Tech and Vault Systems gain ASD Certified Cloud Services' Protected certification level

Sliced Tech and Vault Systems have become the first two service providers in the country to be granted with the 'Protected' level of certification from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

The ASD, which is part of the Department of Defence, awards ASD certifications to cloud service providers for specified cloud services.

The ASD Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL) includes AWS, IBM, Microsoft, Macquarie Telecom and Salesforce, all for different types of cloud services. 

The Protected level, awarded to the two Australian service providers, is for highly sensitive data and this is the first time it has been awarded to any company.

These certifications are key to being able to provide cloud services to particularly security-conscious government agencies. Australian government agencies applying the Information Security Manual must only use outsourced cloud services listed in the ASD CCSL.

ASD Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL)

"Sliced Tech is very pleased to have finally achieved this result," Sliced Tech chief executive Jason McClure told CRN.

"Sliced Tech is the only provider to have ASD Certifications for Gateway and Cloud services at Protected and DLM." 

"This certification validates Sliced Tech's commitment, as an Australian company, to the local market in the delivery to customers of enterprise grade managed IT and cloud services. This shows that we are able to meet compliance and security"

Canberra-based Sliced Tech, which was No. 1 on the CRN Fast50 in 2015, has been very successful in competing with other companies, according to McClure. The company has been awarded the most contracts under the cloud services panel, and possibly the largest value amount, which, to January, made up more than $11 million.

Also based in Canberra, Vault Systems is a wholesaler of cloud services that partners with the likes of Accenture and Fujitsu to do the end-delivery service to government agencies, wherein Vault provides the security platform.

Vault Systems chief executive Rupert Taylor-Price told CRN that the certification was the result of a significant investment over the past six years.

"After six years of hard work building a government cloud, which is located in Sydney and Canberra, it is great that we can now store and manage classified data and systems on shore," he said.

"The Federal Government cloud-first policy requires security requirements to be met. This announcement should be a turning point in the adoption of ICT in general."

Sliced Tech and Vault Systems deliver their services from within two highly secure Canberra Data Centres (CDC) campuses in Canberra.

Canberra Data Centres chief executive Greg Boorer told CRN: "It was a great achievement for the teams involved and very exciting news to be sharing with our CDC ecosystem clients and partners."

CDC is the only commercial data centre provider that has facilities built to meet top secret compliance and the only commercial data centre provider that is certified to Secret classification for all its data centre buildings, staff and data halls, according to CDC.

"With Vault and Sliced Tech already delivering services within the CDC ecosystem, we are now the only data centre provider to be able to provide access to certified Protected cloud solutions."

CDC director of partnerships Matt Holden told CRN: "We launched the Secure GovSky Ecosystem last year and now with ASD certified Protected level cloud added the opportunity is tremendous. It came as a bit of a surprise to me today in some ways but I can't highlight enough how proud I am for those teams to have invested the time and commitment needed to follow through to the certified compliance level"