Government VPN contract goes to Cybertrust

Senator Abetz said when announcing the deal with Cybertrust for management of the Fedlink network that 45 federal agencies were in the process of joining the 52 already signed up, "meaning an estimated 95 percent of electronic communications with the Australian government, including e-mail" will be secured.

The Fedlink programme is designed to allow secure communications between government departments and agencies over the public telecommunications network using virtual private networking technology.

Cybertrust, has effectively been running the Fedlink system since its inception.

The government first announced Fedlink in 1997 and awarded the contract to an Australian company called 90East, which designed and built the system before sending it live in March 2002.

In late 2003, 90East was acquired by Betrusted, which in turn merged with TruSecure and Ubizen to form Cybertrust in October 2004.

Minister Abetz acknowledged that the Government was satisfied with the way Fedlink is managed and saw no reason to change its supplier.

"Cybertrust has had a long history of providing secure communications to the Australian Government and we're happy to see this relationship continue," said Minister Abetz.