Clean Energy Regulator signs up for Fujitsu’s protected cloud
The Australian Clean Energy Regulator (CER) has announced moving workloads to the cloud, using ServiceNow’s software as a service (SaaS) offering managed by Fujitsu.
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The CER is an Australian independent statutory authority that operates as a part of the Department of the Environment and Energy. It is responsible for administering legislation to reduce carbon emissions and increase the use of clean energy.
Fujitsu’s industry cloud for government is built on the Vault Protected Cloud and under the CER arrangement, the platform will be fully-managed by Fujitsu.
“Implementing ServiceNow IT Service Management will give us better visibility into the performance of CER’s IT services,” CER CIO Steven Stolk said on Thursday.
“The Fujitsu Protected Cloud environment provides the flexibility to take advantage of commercially-available platforms such as ServiceNow with the confidence that the specific security needs for government are met.”
The arrangement between the CER and Fujitsu is in addition to its existing managed services contract with Fujitsu.
Fujitsu announced partnering with secure cloud provider Vault to pitch cloud services at Australian government agencies in June.
Built upon Vault’s protected-level ASD certified infrastructure, Fujitsu is able to offer software-, infrastructure-, backup-, and desktop-as-a-service to government users.
“Fujitsu will fully manage the platform in accordance with the relevant controls, software-as-a-service capability, service desk, and support for government customers,” the company said previously.
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) is responsible for handing out certification to cloud providers that allows them to store classified data of government organisations.
Currently, there are 18 secure clouds, from 11 vendors, on the ASD’s Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL).
The CCSL is comprised of clouds certified at unclassified dissemination limiting marker (DLM) level, and also protected level, which is currently the highest security level approved by the ASD.
Gaining protected status at the same time as Vault was fellow local player Sliced Tech, which was shortly followed by Macquarie Government, part of the Macquarie Telecom Group.
NTT-owned Dimension Data was then accredited to provide protected-level cloud services to Australian government entities, despite being an international company and one with datacentres outside of the country.
Microsoft was the fifth and final vendor to appear on the CCSL in a protected capacity, receiving accreditation in April for its “government-configured” clouds to be used for Australian government data classified up to that level. But unlike all previous such certifications, Microsoft’s certifications were provisional, and came with what the ASD called “consumer guides”.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) was announced last month as the first department to take up Microsoft’s secure cloud.
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