Macquarie Telecom provides secure services to many government agencies under Gateway Certification, including the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; however the private sector can use the service as well - if such strict security controls are deemed necessary.

The Intellicentre is just two floors housed above Pitt St, Sydney, on the outskirts of the CBD. A demilitarized zone serves private sector clients, with a separate section for government clients. Access to the DSD and governmental section is controlled by a number of steel doors - two with biometric access panels.

The city location is of no extra security concern for CASA, according to Macquarie Telecom's executive managing director of hosting and security, Greg Thomson. The center is on a separate power grid to the CBD and the city location is more beneficial to customers than being "out in the boondocks", he said.

"It is more about the economics of being an outsourced infrastructure provider - if you can do all that it doesn't really matter where you are."

CASA's infrastructure services manager, Gray McLaren, said potential disruption to the CASA Web site was a chief driver to moving to a hosted environment.