Telstra Security Operations Centre (SOC), in Sydney
Telstra has launched its Sydney Security Operation Centre to offer managed security services to, initially, government and enterprise customers.
This is one out of three centres. An SOC is already operational in Melbourne but will be officially launched later this month. Back in 2009, Telstra launched its first SOC in Canberra, as it started to provide managed security services to enterprise and government customers.
The telecommunications company used technology from Readify, the software development company it acquired in July 2016.
“Readify has been very involved in this, in developing the portal and the logic in the portal that talks through to the back end,” Telstra security practice director, Neil Campbell, said.
Campbell also revealed that Telstra also counted with technology from advanced security analytics software provider Cognevo, which the telco acquired in November 2016. Telstra is using Cognevo’s machine intelligence to find “unknown unknowns”.
Telstra is also leveraging Microsoft Azure for its management platform.
“We don’t have to store racks and racks to run management platform. We run that on Microsoft Azure which gives us the ability to dynamically scale up and down and also means we could deploy our entire technology stack for data sovereignty purposes anywhere in the world that Microsoft Azure operates in a 24 hour period,” Campbell said.
Further to the launch of the Sydney and Melbourne SOCs, Telstra CEO Andrew Penn also announced a new network of security operations centres.
“These centres support our global network of more than 500 cyber security experts and will uniquely position Telstra to better monitor, detect and respond to security incidents for all of our customers. It will provide enterprise customers with access to our world class security teams.”
With the use of machine learning, the centres will intercept and understand cyber criminals, their tactics, patterns and behaviour and take steps to prevent it.
Penn also promoted the need for collaboration between government, businesses and the community for a cyber safe country.
The Security Operation Centres reinforce Telstra’s commitment to working with government and industry bodies to create a cyber secure Australia.
“We will continue, from a Government prospective, to draw on Telstra resources to help the us deal with cyber issues just like we will draw on private resources from the private sector,” the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security, Dan Tehan, said.
With more and more connected devices, Tehan said he hasn’t seen cyber security built in most of these devices. He expects that the industry will address this instead of wait for the government to create regulations to then take action.
“The private sector drives innovation and product development, not Government. Industry must be empowered to design and implement products the public want while Government can provide expert support through its commitment to information sharing,” Tehan said.
