NEXTDC’s A1 Adelaide and D1 Darwin data centres have now achieved Certified Strategic status under the Commonwealth Government’s Hosting Certification Framework (HCF). This is the highest level of assurance administered by the Department of Home Affairs (HA) and these two facilities are the only ones certified to this level in South Australia and Northern Territory.
With this milestone, all NEXTDC data centres operated at scale are now covered under the Department of Home Affairs’ HCF, except for our three operational edge facilities (SC1 Sunshine Coast, NE1 Newman and PH1 Port Hedland) as well as S6 Sydney.
This extends sovereign-grade capability across every major region of Australia and strengthens the compliant options available to government agencies, their partners and the service providers that support sensitive or mission-critical workloads.
The HCF plays a central role in safeguarding the nation’s digital foundations. As the Commonwealth’s benchmark for secure, sovereign hosting, the HCF sets the most stringent requirements for ownership, operational control, physical and logical security, and governance. Its top tier, Certified Strategic, represents the strongest possible level of Commonwealth assurance for facilities trusted to host critical government data and services.
This certification arrives at a pivotal moment for Australia. Government agencies are quickly modernising the way they deliver services, while AI capabilities shift from exploration into mission-critical deployment. This is driving an unprecedented need for secure, sovereign digital infrastructure that is built, controlled and operated within Australia.
With A1 Adelaide and D1 Darwin now certified at the highest level, customers gain greater choice and confidence to pursue these ambitions securely and at scale.
But this milestone is not about us. It’s about what it enables for our customers who depend on this assurance every day.
Why Certified Strategic Matters For Customers
Government agencies, their technology partners, and service providers that operate within government digital ecosystems must meet stringent requirements to ensure that data remains protected, controlled and sovereign. The Hosting Certification Framework is more than a tick-box exercise: it’s the Commonwealth’s way of ensuring that the foundations of its digital infrastructure are trustworthy, independently validated and resilient.
By achieving Certified Strategic status, A1 and D1 now provide customers with:
- Mandatory compliance for government workloads
Many agencies and the partners who deliver into government can only host sensitive or protected workloads in facilities that have met the Certified Strategic standard. Adding Adelaide and Darwin to our certified fleet expands the available footprint for agencies operating under those obligations.
- Stronger sovereign assurance
Certified Strategic confirms that the facility is Australian-controlled, Australian-operated and aligned with national security principles governing ownership, access and operational governance. For customers managing classified, regulated or high-stakes data, this assurance is foundational.
- Enhanced security and operational integrity
The Framework assesses far more than physical security. It examines how a facility is run, maintained, governed and protected. For customers, this translates to confidence that mission-critical systems are running in environments purpose-built to withstand disruption and engineered for resilience.
- Greater geographic choice without compromising compliance
With Adelaide and Darwin now certified, government customers and partners gain more options for redundancy, proximity and regional deployment, all without losing access to the Commonwealth’s highest assurance tier.
Supporting Australia’s Next Wave of Digital and AI Growth
Beyond compliance, the expansion of Certified Strategic facilities has implications for the nation’s broader digital ambitions. Australia’s AI future encompasses defence systems and environmental modelling to secure data analytics and sovereign cloud platforms, all of which will depend on high-density, highly secure and sovereign hosting environments.
Certified Strategic facilities provide the bedrock for this evolution.
- For AI workloads, they offer the secure compute environments required for sensitive data ingestion, model training and inference.
- For hyperscale cloud providers, they provide sovereign-certified infrastructure that can underpin government cloud regions and hybrid architectures.
- For systems integrators and partners, they deliver a compliant foundation on which to build government-grade platforms and services.
- For customers in defence, critical infrastructure and regulated industries, they reinforce Australia’s national capability to protect, operate and scale essential digital systems.
In short: the more Certified Strategic capacity the nation has, the more confidently Australia can pursue secure digital transformation at scale.
Strengthening Operational Certainty and Future Readiness
The addition of A1 and D1 is also about providing choice and certainty in regions where demand is rising rapidly.
- Adelaide (A1) supports a fast-growing ecosystem of defence, space, energy and research organisations, many of which work directly with sensitive or classified information.
- Darwin (D1) serves as a critical northern hub, strategically positioned for government, defence, remote services and sovereign resilience.
With both facilities now Certified Strategic, customers gain assurance that these regions are supported by infrastructure aligned with Australia’s national security and sovereignty objectives.
A Stronger Nationwide Landscape for Government and Industry
With this milestone, NEXTDC’s major national footprint is now fully aligned with the Commonwealth’s highest certification tier. For our customers, this means a consistent, sovereign-grade platform across Australia enabling secure, compliant deployment wherever it is required.
In a moment when Australia’s digital future is being defined by security, sovereignty and the race to responsibly scale AI, the Hosting Certification Framework provides a vital anchor. And we’re committed to ensuring that our facilities not only meet those expectations, but help lead the country forward.
Contact NEXTDC now to better understand how our data centre platform supports the protection of Government and enterprise sensitive data.
