The service is a purpose-built site conforming to Defense Signals Directorate Gateway Certification (certified by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization) standard T4 and BS 7799, offering high-speed Internet and secured extranet, antivirus, intrusion detection and secure hosting.

The CASA Web site will be hosted at the Macquarie Telecom "Intellicentre".

A CASA spokesperson said the move was prompted by an internal review of its Web systems which found they were not DSD compliant.

"The one area we were falling down was at the gateway in terms of virus protection and the easiest way was to outsource the gateway," the spokesperson said.

"We looked at 90East, then went to market ... at the moment we are paying around A$14,000 (US$10,270) a month but that price is scalable due to traffic."