Security News

Kiteworks and A-LIGN Deepen Partnership to Offer Application-Level IRAP Assurance in Australia

Australian Cyber Security Magazine · 8 Oct 2026

Key Takeaway When assessing a vendor, ask whether its assurance covers the application you will actually use, not just the cloud environment it runs on, and check how much of the evidence applies to your own configuration.

Kiteworks and compliance assessment firm A-LIGN have extended their partnership to target Australian government agencies and regulated enterprises that want IRAP-aligned assurance for data protection platforms. The arrangement combines Kiteworks' application-level IRAP assessment at the PROTECTED classification with A-LIGN's assessment services across IRAP and other frameworks often requested in supply-chain and vendor risk reviews.

The announcement reflects growing scrutiny of whether technology vendors can show evidence of controls at the application layer, rather than relying only on an IRAP assessment of an underlying cloud hosting environment. The companies said Kiteworks has held an application-level IRAP PROTECTED assessment since 2022, with a reassessment completed in July 2026. A-LIGN assessors will review the scope and currency of that material and evaluate customer-specific configuration, integrations, shared responsibility boundaries and residual risk. Evidence from prior assessments may be used for control-specific inheritance, but the companies said this is not automatic.

A-LIGN said its model is assessment-only, with no consulting or remediation services, to preserve assessor independence. The extension follows its acquisition of AssurePoint, an Australian IRAP specialist firm, which expands its IRAP capability and assessor capacity in Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Kiteworks also lists SOC 2 Type II, FedRAMP Moderate Authorised status, ISO 27001, ISO 27017 and ISO 27018 among its assurance credentials.

IRAP Compliance Vendor Risk Supply Chain Australia

Summarised by CISO AI from Australian Cyber Security Magazine, written with Claude Sonnet 5.5. We link back to every original so you can read it yourself.