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SoftIron Australia today inaugurated Australia’s first-ever component-level IT infrastructure manufacturing facility at a site at Botany in Sydney.
Backed by a Defence Department innovation grant, the company’s Advanced Manufacturing Facility will produce ICT componentry for the company’s HyperCloud Intelligent Cloud Fabric technology for building clouds, which is billed as a world first.
With even sensitive defence components utilising components sources from overseas supply chains, SoftIron manufactures and assembles all of its own equipment and components.
By manufacturing locally, SoftIron all but eliminates the risk of malicious state actors introducing firmware implants or so-called ‘backdoors’ into critical information systems, according to SoftIron COO Jason Van der Schyff.
He said recent events had made it clear that onshoring or ‘friend-shoring’ ICT supply chains was the only sure way for Australian IT providers to manage their commercial and strategic risks.
Van der Schyff said: “Recent geopolitical events and the deteriorating strategic environment have exposed major weaknesses in global supply chains, particularly in the area of critical technology.
“Our reliance on foreign-manufactured componentry has increased the risk of malicious state actors introducing covert hardware or firmware during the manufacturing process.”
Describing the new facility as a step towards developing critical sovereign capability, Van der Schyff said SoftIron could offer total transparency of the design and manufacturing of hardware and software in its HyperCloud IT infrastructure.
Through a verification process called Secure Provenance, SoftIron customers can audit products from end-to-end to ensure they are delivered precisely as designed and specified.
“We are seeing other Western nations like the United States move toward supply chain security in the area of critical technology with initiatives like the Chips Act.
“SoftIron is ahead of the curve here in Australia by identifying the looming challenge and putting in place capabilities to meet it.”
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The new facility already has local customers and partners including Baidam Solutions, Deep Recognition, JEM Computer Systems, NCI Australia, Real World Technologies and Servers Australia.
It aims to take advantage of the AUKUS agreement, which will see an unprecedented level of information sharing between the US, the UK and Australia, and their industry partners.
SoftIron is a UK venture-backed company founded in 2012 with offices in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.
The facility was opened by Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite.
Picture: SoftIron
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