Virtustream is the newest addition to the Australian Signals Directorate’s Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL).
Virtustream Cloud has been certified for use with unclassified but sensitive government data, making it the eleventh service provider to be added to the ASD-maintained list.
Virtustream is owned by Dell Technologies, thanks to its 2015 acquisition by EMC.
The CCSL was launched in April 2015 with the aim of making it easier for government agencies to adopt cloud services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft were the first companies to be listed. Australian companies Macquarie Telecom, Vault Systems and Sliced Tech were added later that year.
In addition, IBM, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Dimension Data, and Education Services Australia have cloud offerings on the list.
Vault Systems and Sliced Tech were the first companies on the list to be certified for use with classified government data, followed by Macquarie Government. Microsoft and Dimension Data also offer services that have had their IRAP certifications for use with classified data accepted by the ASD.
AWS announced in March that it had successfully undergone an IRAP assessment of its Sydney region for the processing of government data classified at the Protected level. The ASD has yet to formally list AWS as suitable for use with classified data.
In February the government released its Secure Cloud Strategy, which is intended to boost the use of public cloud services by agencies.
The strategy states that agencies “should consider public cloud first and in preference to any other cloud deployment model” although they need to ensure that any service “has the appropriate security implementation for the information being handled.”
However, it noted that there were problems with the ASD’s capacity to undertake certification of cloud services and recommended a model whereby government entities could lean on the IRAP assessments of other agencies.