Home Affairs, ASIC, ACMA leave Global Switch data centre

Three federal government agencies exited Global Switch’s Sydney-based data centre in line with a July 2022 deadline to migrate all sensitive data from the facility, with a fourth agency expected to leave this week.

iTnews can reveal the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Communications Media Authority (ACMA) all left the Chinese-owned facility before the end of last month.

The group of agencies agreed to exit GSU by the end of the 2021-22 financial year under the Home Affairs-led ‘securing sovereign data’ project, replacing a previously self-imposed deadline of September 2020.

The deadline coincides with the requirement under the hosting certification framework that agencies now host all sensitive government data, whole-of-government systems and systems rated to a protected-level with only ‘certified strategic’ or ‘certified assured’ data centre providers.

Only around half of the 15 providers on the government’s data centre facilities supplies panel have so far been accredited as 'certified strategic': AirTrunk, Australian Data Centres, Canberra Data Centres, DCI, Equinix, Fujitsu, Macquarie Telecom and NEXTDC.

A Home Affairs spokesperson told iTnews the “ACMA, ASIC and Home Affairs... migrated all their sensitive data and exited the GSU data centre ahead of the June 30 2022 deadline”, without elaborating on the exit date.

As previously reported, ASIC and Home Affairs struck new data centre deals with CDC in January 2021 and April 2021, replacing existing deals with GSU. It is unclear, however, where ACMA has migrated its data.

The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), the fourth member of the Home Affairs-led group, was also slated to leave the facility by July 2022, but its departure has been hindered by supply chain issues.

“Due to unexpected supply chain issues, ADHA’s exit was slightly delayed. ADHA migrated its sensitive data on July 7 2022 and is scheduled to exit the GSU data centre on July 21 2022,” the spokesperson said.

All four agencies put in place safeguards and other mitigations ahead of their respective departures, which according to the spokesperson meant “data was protected and secure until [agencies] had the opportunity to transition the data out” of GSU.

Documents released under freedom of information laws put the total cost of the exit activities at $115 million, though this is understood not to include the cost of migrating other agencies that still use GSU.

As revealed by iTnews last year, the Department of Defence is one agency that will continue to host data in the facility until September 2025 under a $53.3 million deal, though most sensitive data has already been migrated out.

The spokesperson was “unable to comment on the status of exit for other agencies, not being coordinated by Home Affairs”.