Australia has initiated a costly new project to move its intelligence operations to the cloud, with the Canberra government planning to invest billions of dollars in the coming years. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a new partnership with Amazon Web Services to build a top-secret cloud platform for intelligence-related operations, aiming to elevate Australia’s capabilities to world-class levels. Director-General of National Intelligence, Andrew Shearer, highlighted the importance of the initiative for interoperability and stated that the project will cost at least AU$2 billion over 10 years.
The platform will be a sovereign cloud service hosting sensitive data and operations, with the potential to create up to 2,000 local jobs and bring improved reliability, security, and resilience to Australian agencies. The agreement with AWS will include the latest technological advances such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms for cybersecurity. The platform will be split across three separate data centres run by a local Amazon subsidiary, supporting the Australian Defence Force’s military operations and enhancing collaboration with the United States.
This new initiative is part of the National Defence Strategy 2024, with Canberra planning to invest billions of dollars over the next decade to enhance cyber capabilities and strengthen the Defence’s enterprise data and ICT infrastructure. The Australian government expects the partnership with AWS to boost the country’s economy by working with local companies to design and build the infrastructure. Amazon plans to invest AU$13.2 billion in Australia by 2027, following AU$9.1 billion spent since AWS launched in the country in 2011.
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