The Benefits of Moving to Sovereign Cloud

AUCloud’s Sovereign Cloud has been designed to enable you to get the benefits of public cloud services without compromising digital sovereignty over your data.

Whether you need to move from on premise, public or private cloud to Sovereign Cloud, you’ll quickly benefit from the services available, business benefits and world class leading Australian-based support.

What Are the Characteristics of a Sovereign Cloud?

A Sovereign Cloud is designed to protect and unlock the value of critical data (e.g., national data, corporate data, and personal data) for both private and public sector organizations.  It is all about ensuring the protection and control of your data in Australia. 

1. Improves control of data by providing both data residency and data sovereignty

Hyperscalers provide data residency. They will tell you that your data is ‘resident’ in Australia ie., it is stored in a data centre in Australia.  AUCloud’s sovereign cloud takes the next step, combining data residency with data sovereignty which ensures your data is only ever subject to Australian laws and jurisdiction. 

2. Delivers a national capability for the digital economy

There is increasing awareness of the need to nurture an Australian digital capability to underpin our digital economy and hence our sovereign resilience.  Sovereign Clouds provide a key component of this capability by ensuring resilience of data confidentiality, integrity and availability in Australia.

3. Secures data with audited security controls

The ability to ensure that the security controls protecting your data are working is vital. AUCloud’s controls not only meet recognised global sovereign cloud standards but also the highest security controls required by the Australian government. 

4. Ensures compliance with data privacy laws

Australia’s data privacy laws are comprehensive and, in all likelihood, set to be made even more stringent in light of ongoing cyberattacks against Australian businesses. A Sovereign Cloud ensures your organisation keeps pace with compliance requirements that safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of your data.   

5. Australian Always

As an Australian Sovereign Cloud provider AUCloud is Australian owned and operated and our services are supported by security-cleared Australian citizens. As a Government Certified Strategic Cloud Provider all the data hosted by AUCloud sits within Government Certified Strategic data centres, located in Australia. No data ever leaves Australia – including your account information (for instance network data, IP addressing, device details, credentials, diagnostics, API calls etc), support, analytics, or metadata.

What are the benefits of using AUCloud Sovereign Cloud services?

IMPROVE SECURITY
  • Implement ‘local’ security controls more quickly and effectively
  • Secure against rapidly changing attack vectors
IMPROVE COMPLIANCE
  • Achieve compliance significantly faster – simply by using our sovereign cloud
  • Demonstrate ongoing compliance – because we do.
IMPROVE CONTROL
  • Ensure visibility and auditing of all cloud admin and activities
  • Prevent unauthorized or authorized access to data by foreign entities
UNLOCK DATA
  • Leverage advanced services to enable data insights and ensure data integrity
FUTURE PROOF
  • Avoid vendor lock-in
  • Protect against changing regulations, security threats and geopolitics
FUEL INNOVATION
  • Develop a national and sovereign digital capability
  • Unlock economic innovation and growth through pooled data potential

Who Is the Sovereign Cloud Designed For?

Critical Industries

Critical infrastructure organisations provide the backbone upon which our economy and society is built. Legislation has identified and defined 13 Critical Industries (CI) that are subject to new security requirements, and the possibility of government intervention and penalties should they fail to protect the data in their control. Find out more here. A Sovereign Cloud means CI organisations are assured that their data stays in Australia is and not at risk of a foreign jurisdiction accessing their data through the obligations of their cloud service provider.

Federal Government

As part of their digital agenda Federal Government agencies are seeking to access the cost efficiency, control and manageability benefits accessed by moving workloads and data to the cloud. Their top consideration is to secure the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of their data. They want a cloud provider that not just meets but exceeds Government security requirements enabling them to meet their security compliance obligations. Rightfully, there are additional security considerations and the Essential Eight guidelines to be adhered to, which can be met using Sovereign Cloud solutions.

State Governments

Australian State Government agencies have their own jurisdictional requirements regarding data handling. However, given the pace and variety of cyberattacks against data held by Australian organisations, they are also looking for best practice with regards to data protection and management.

Security Conscious Enterprises

Outside the 13 CI sectors, many other businesses are becoming more and more conscious of threats to the data they hold. Recent attacks against Optus and Medibank highlight the reputational and financial damage successful cyberattacks can cause. It is not surprising that a range of businesses are therefore seeking the extra protection and risk mitigation offered by a sovereign cloud solution.

How Do I Get Started?

M365 Backup Project

If your business relies extensively on the M365 productivity suite, it’s your responsibility to keep your data backed up and protected – in accordance with the Microsoft Shared Responsibility Model. A sovereign cloud based M365 Backup solution is for many organisations the ideal first project to test the capabilities of AUCloud’s Sovereign Cloud solution.

Our M365 Backup solutions – powered by Veeam – offer the following benefits for your business:

  • Data backups: Automate and schedule regular M365 cloud backups
  • eDiscovery: Uncover data required for retention quickly with efficient eDiscovery tools
  • Data retention: Adjust your retention times based on your requirements
  • Keep costs under control: Utilize backup solutions with a straightforward pricing structure; no hidden fees or additional costs.
  • Straightforward data restoration: Restore data during unexpected failures and events, from an individual email through to a complete user-based recovery
  • Security: AUCloud’s M365 backup solutions utilise best-in-class cybersecurity monitoring and encryption

Immutable backups mitigate ransomware risk

AUCloud provides your business with secure cloud backup solutions that protect your data from ransomware attacks. By utilising AUCloud’s immutable backups using Object Lock, your backups are encrypted and cannot be held to ransom.

AUCloud’s industry-leading BaaS (Backup as a Service) operates on our sovereign cloud environment, which is IRAP assessed to the PROTECTED controls of the Governments Information Security Manual – ensuring we meet the highest security controls to meet your data protection needs.   

Learn More

AUCloud Solution

M365 Backup as a Service

Case Study

RDA Northern Rivers

AUCloud Solution

Backup as a Service (BaaS)

Video

Sovereign Cloud Explained