Web performance and security company Cloudflare has stepped up its presence in Australia and New Zealand, opening four data centres in Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart, and Christchurch over the past 12 months.
This latest round of expansion raises Cloudflare’s network to a total of nine cities across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). Cloudflare’s global network spans over 270 cities, across more than 100 countries.
Dealing with Escalating Frequency of Cyber-attacks in ANZ
Cloudflare’s expansion in Australasia is timely, as the incidence of cyber-attacks across the region has been on the rise. New Zealand, ranked 56th in the world in cyber security, had 2333 cyber security incidents reported in the first quarter of 2022.
Over the 2020-2021 financial year, cybercrime reports in Australia increased by 13%, with more incidents filed as being “substantial” in impact by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). Australia has also been increasingly concerned about cyber crime as a national security threat, with the appointment of Clare O’Neil as Minister for Cybersecurity in June 2022.
Cloudflare has expressed its hope that the expansion of 4 new data centres would place Cloudflare in a better position to address the pressing issue of cybersecurity within the Australasia region. Cloudflare first expanded its network to Sydney in 2012, but since then has ramped up its operations in Australia and New Zealand.
Earlier in June 2022, Cloudflare converted its busiest locations across its 19 data centres around the globe to a more flexible and resilient architecture, known as Multi-Colo Pop (MCP), which should allow Cloudflare to run maintenance in its data centres without disrupting customer traffic.
However, the centralisation of data centre operations also posed some problems for Cloudflare, which experienced an outage due to an internal prefix reading error within the MCP system. Cloudflare did not mention whether its four latest data centres would also be run using MCP architecture.
Regardless, Raymond Maisano, Head of ANZ at Cloudflare, affirmed that the expansion would enhance Cloudflare’s offerings to its customers and aid users in protecting themselves from cyber-attacks. “The closer we bring our network to every person in Australia and New Zealand, the faster we can deliver local content to websites, applications and corporate networks. Opening four additional data centres across the region furthers our mission of providing faster, secure, private and reliable Internet for all.”
“Cybersecurity Implementation” is a key sub-category under the awards category “Outstanding IT and Cloud Projects” at this year’s W.Media Asia Pacific Cloud & Datacenter Awards programme, where enterprise users and industry experts will come together to share their insights and opinions on IT and cloud innovations. If you are interested in nominating or sponsoring, visit our Awards Page for more information. Nominations are open until 31st July.
