Fortinet opens $75m North Sydney office as staff headcount triples

Cybersecurity company Fortinet has spent millions on a new headquarters as it expands due to demand for local data centres with sovereign cyber capabilities.

A reception area at Fortinet $75m McMahons Points headquarters

US cybersecurity company Fortinet opens its $75m data centre and Sydney headquarters on Friday, after the company more than tripled its local headcount.

The company has hired between 60 and 70 staff per year for the past three years, rising from 72 to now more than 260 – 200 of whom will be based at its new office.

Fortinet bought the building at 162 Blues Point Road, McMahons Point, about 450m from North Sydney Station, from private property company Kingsmede in 2021 for $60m.

The company has spent $15m fitting a ground level data centre with 30 racks as well as generators, on-site batteries and solar panels which provide about 9 per cent of the building’s total energy use.

Combined, that was enough to keep the lights on for about 15 minutes during a power outage, Fortinet country manager Dale Nachman told The Australian.

Having its own local data centre was crucial as more companies sought sovereign cyber capabilities, he said.

Fortinet has a data centre in its new $75m Sydney office.

“It’s become a big issue from a sovereignty point of view. Customers in Australia don’t want to see their data moving offshore,” Mr Nachman said.

“They are quite comfortable sometimes if it’s moving to another ‘Five Eyes country’ but that also came with latency issues.”

Regulators are increasingly cracking down on Australian companies whose data is being hosted by offshore servers, and this is driving up demand for local cloud and data centre offerings.

Fortinet, which also has an office on Collins St in the Melbourne CBD, focuses on cyber security for government and critical infrastructure providers, such as banks, telcos and energy providers.

The company found itself in the right place at the right time during Covid-19, when critical infrastructure increased their cybersecurity practices.

“We went through a very steep growth curve during Covid. During that time we were seeing growth because of the cyber requirements and also because of the growth of remote work,” Mr Nachman said.

“We did see massive growth through the years of Covid but it has definitely plateaued out now and for the last two years it has been a much more consistent and normalised market.”

Mr Nachman said Fortinet wanted to grow in the Australian market and use the new headquarters to manage its Asia Pacific operations. The company would seek to build a data centre in New Zealand.

The company picked up a contract with the South Australian Department for Education to teach staff in public schools about security awareness and training.

Originally published as Fortinet opens $75m North Sydney office as staff headcount triples