Oracle today announced that Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence has achieved Hosting Certification Framework (HCF) at the ‘Certified Strategic’ level. With this highest level of HCF certification, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) can provide government customers with the security standards required to support their full technology portfolio and more capabilities to fulfill their missions. This certification continues Oracles’ commitment to equip government customers with world-class innovations that offer leading security and compliance and consistent high performance with simple, predictable pricing.

“Government customers in Australia rely on Oracle Cloud to run their most critical workloads and to achieve better mission outcomes. Oracle has the tools they need to efficiently migrate and manage workloads in the cloud. With HCF certification, we can support the highest levels of security standards for PROTECTED workloads across local, state, territory, and federal government, as well as the Department of Defence,” said Rand Waldron, vice president, sovereign cloud, Oracle.

Building off the previous HCF certification of ‘Certified Strategic’ for Sydney and Melbourne Oracle Public Cloud Regions, the certification of Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence, ensures Oracle is able to support all levels of government, as well as Defence with built in security for mission-critical and modern workloads such as AI, machine learning, and simulations. Physically isolated from Oracle’s other public and government cloud regions, Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence offers more than 100 OCI services including compute (CPU and HPC virtual machine and bare metal), storage (block, object, and archive storage, including new immutable object storage capabilities); database (Oracle Database and Oracle Exadata Cloud Service); OCI FastConnect; OCI Identity and Access Management; OCI Key Management Service; OCI Load Balancer, and more.

"Achieving HCF certification for Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence underscores our unwavering commitment to provide government with access to innovative technology while ensuring the highest levels of security and resiliency. We recognise that safeguarding critical data and infrastructure is paramount for the Australian Government and its citizens. This certification not only enhances our capability to help our customers meet the highest security standards but also empowers Australians with greater confidence in the protection of their data," said Stephen Bovis, regional managing director, Australia and New Zealand.

OCI Government Regions across the globe are focused on addressing public sector needs with capabilities including strong encryption, in-depth auditing, robust security controls, and a curated community of users.

The HCF compliance status is available on the HCF Certified Service Providers website and the HCF certificate is available to customers on request. Along with HCF certification, OCI has achieved certifications and attestations for key security standards globally, including IRAP at PROTECTED classification in Australia, SOC, ISO, PCI, and HIPAA. These independent third-party assurance programs demonstrate Oracle’s commitment to security and to meeting the needs of public sector customers.