Dell Technologies has successfully completed an Infosec Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) Assessment of APEX Backup Services, its hosted data protection offering for Software as-a-Service applications, endpoints and hybrid workloads, at the PROTECTED level.

APEX Backup Services delivers high-performance and secure digital data backup with disaster recovery, long-term retention and automated compliance. The completion of the IRAP assessment represents Dell Technologies’ investment in meeting Australian cybersecurity requirements for Australian organisations in addition to its existing certifications.

Achieving the “protected” information classification level also assures government agencies that they can use a vendor’s offerings to process and store workloads in a range of use cases.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), in conjunction with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), initiated the IRAP Assessment process to ensure the standard of cybersecurity and information security assessments for ICT systems processing or storing government information.

Data protection, data management and data resilience have become increasingly important in the face of the sophistication and frequency of cyber threats and the acceleration of multi-cloud architecture adoption.

APEX Backup Services uses cloud infrastructure to offer a Dell-managed solution that delivers resiliency and speed organisations need to meet business service level agreements. With no infrastructure to manage, businesses can get started within minutes. Customers have complete visibility through a single console and a consistent management experience across SaaS applications, endpoints and hybrid workloads. Customers can easily scale their infrastructure as needed with infinite, on-demand scalability, and better manage IT budgets with predictable and controllable costs.

Critical to the APEX Backup Services offer is its Zero Trust architecture. Dell Technologies aims to serve as a catalyst for customers to achieve Zero Trust outcomes by making the design and integration of this architecture easier. Security is critical to everything built at Dell Technologies and Zero Trust is one of the foundational pillars for APEX Backup Services.

Following this assessment, Dell Technologies will be submitting its other APEX offerings for approval for Australian Federal Government use in the coming months.

“Undertaking an IRAP assessment is part of our ongoing global commitment to adhere to local regulations and certifications to ensure customer data is safe during their digital transformation initiatives. As a result, more government departments and agencies will be able to innovate faster and deliver superior customer experiences using hosted data protection like APEX Backup Services,” said Angela Fox, senior vice president and managing director of Dell Technologies ANZ.