Customer: The National Water Commission

Website: http://www.nwc.gov.au/

Industry: Government

Service: Macquarie Hosting critical application hosting and secure DSD gateway

“Macquarie Hosting keeps it simple for us. Our data is always available when we need it and we know it’s secure. The Macquarie Hosting team is incredibly knowledgeable, but other than routine maintenance, we’ve not had to call on their services - the solution is reliable and just works.”

Natalie Wollum, System Administrator

The Company

The National Water Commission (NWC) is responsible for helping to drive national water reform and advising the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and state and territory governments on water issues. The Commission is also responsible for managing the implementation of the National Water Initiative - the blueprint for national water reform - and implementing two funding  programmes of the Australian Government Water Fund - the Water Smart Australia programme and the Raising National Water Standards programme.

Business Challenge - Protecting Sensitive Data

Much of the information the NWC deals with is highly sensitive – it ranges from water reform proposals from proponents seeking funding and assessments of their likely success, to funding and invoicing details. The Commission is the entry point for commercial in confidence information.

As an organisation that provides advice to the Australian Government, the Commission requires high level security for some of its documentation. When this is the case all information must be stored in a highly secure manner and distributed only on a ‘need to know basis’.

Technology Challenge – Hosting with the highest level of accredited security

The NWC team began its search for a critical application hosting partner when the agency was established in 2004. In searching for a provider they found that their high level security requirements automatically discounted numerous vendors from the short list.

Macquarie Hosting’s gateway and hosting solution stood out from the rest of the field. Running the most highly certified data centre in Australia, Macquarie Hosting offered NWC the required level of assurance that its hosting environment met global best-practice standards and Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) Gateway certification.

The DSD Certification is an independent assessment that a Government service provider's gateway has been configured and managed appropriately and that the suitable safeguards and processes have been implemented and are operating effectively.

The highest security rating a non-Government organisation can secure, Macquarie Hosting’s DSD Certification gave NWC the confidence that they were protected at the highest level from external threats.

“Macquarie’s accreditation by the DSD gave us the assurance that we’d get the best possible protection and we knew it would automatically meet the government’s required security level” said Natalie Wollum, IT Manager for NWC.

The Solution

The solution designed for NWC is a fully managed service, comprising of managed servers with firewall and data links housed in Macquarie Telecom’s DSD Certified Data Centre in Sydney.

The servers are running Clarity, software from CA.   The servers support the processing and management of grant applications and grant information.

The design and management of Macquarie Telecom’s data centre also complements the Commission’s aim of helping the Australian environment. Focused on decreasing energy consumption while increasing energy efficiency, Macquarie Hosting is taking a practical approach to moving towards an eco-friendly, energy efficient data centre.

Products and Services

• Managed dedicated servers
• DSD gateways services
• Managed firewalls

Key Benefits / Results - In Safe Hands

“Macquarie Hosting keeps it simple for us. Our data is always available when we need it and we know it’s secure. The Macquarie Hosting team is incredibly knowledgeable, but other than routine maintenance we’ve not had to call on their services - the solution is reliable and just works,” Wollum said.

The NWC team is now so confident in the reliability of its back-end services that later this year they will focus on the front end. A new portal will enable applicants to log on to a web browser and update files, check information and communicate with their NWC project manager.

All components of this solution will be hosted by Macquarie Hosting who specialise in 24/7, management of mission critical applications for companies with high transaction, high security websites. Macquarie Hosting’s ability to support NWC in coping with the unpredictable peaks and troughs in traffic to the site while keeping network latency down will be vital in this project.

“There’s nothing more off putting than waiting for a page to load – the idea behind the portal is to make it easier for our applicants to talk to us and to keep us up to date on their projects. With Macquarie Hosting’s support we can be confident that the project won’t fall at the first hurdle,” Wollum said.