The future is digital, but connected critical infrastructure is a prime target for cyberattacks. So how can utilities secure remote assets without compromising performance?
When a bushfire cuts power to a remote water pumping station, back up systems need to work flawlessly to ensure the local community has access to vital drinking water. But what happens when that same station relies on public internet to report its status back to operators? Suddenly, the very connectivity that enables remote monitoring becomes a potential gateway for cyberattacks.
Utilities know all too well that this kind of scenario is a very real threat across Australia. Critical infrastructure operators face a difficult choice: deploy digital tools to manage remote assets more effectively or maintain security by keeping systems ‘air-gapped’ and isolated. The problem is that isolation no longer works in a world where extreme weather events are increasing and skilled technicians are in short supply.
For example, regional water authorities managing dozens of pump stations across hundreds of kilometres, traditionally had to send technicians out to check each site manually. This not only consumes valuable time, but increases the chance of problems going undetected until they become failures. Digital monitoring promised to solve this challenge, but it created new vulnerabilities that operators have struggled to address.
The connectivity trap
Australia’s infrastructure transformation is happening at breakneck speed. Coal plants are shutting down while renewable energy projects race to fill the gap. New water infrastructure must service growing populations while ageing assets require constant monitoring. Climate change brings more extreme weather events that test every system’s resilience.
Australia needs to install more than 40GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030 as ageing coal‑powered infrastructure reaches end of life. Much of this infrastructure will be in remote areas where connectivity options are limited. Wind farms in South Australia’s mid-north, solar installations across Queensland’s outback, and pumped hydro projects in Tasmania’s highlands all require reliable communications to operate safely.
Digital tools offer solutions to these challenges. Remote monitoring can detect problems before they become failures. Automated systems can respond to emergencies when human intervention isn’t possible. Real-time data helps operators make better decisions about resource allocation and maintenance scheduling.
But digitalisation creates a fundamental security problem.
Traditional approaches to securing remote infrastructure relied on physical isolation – if a pump station was 200km from the nearest town, it had inherent protection from attackers – physical distance. Modern connectivity requirements eliminate this protection.
Vocus Satellite Development Manager, Ash Grove, explained that digitisation means having centralised control of assets, which eliminates the need to have systems and people stationed at all remote sites.
“However, if control data has to go over the internet, that opens up the possibility that attackers could access systems too,” he said
This creates a particular problem for Australia’s geography. Critical infrastructure in metropolitan areas can use secure private networks over existing terrestrial connections like fibre, NBN and wireless. However, assets in very remote locations without land-based networks don’t have this option.
Remote locations could invest in multi-hop wireless solutions or have fibre installed, but both are costly and have long lead times. A single fibre connection to a remote wind farm might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take months to complete. More importantly, depending on a single connection type creates a single point of failure that could bring down entire systems.
The economic impact extends beyond installation costs. When renewable energy projects can’t establish reliable communications, they face delays that affect their ability to participate in energy markets effectively. Without real-time monitoring and control capabilities, operators can’t optimise performance or respond quickly to grid stability requirements.
Satellite’s tantalising promise
LEO satellites now offer high-speed, low-latency connectivity to any location in Australia, and unlike traditional geostationary satellites, they provide performance closer to fibre levels while covering areas that fibre and wireless can’t reach economically.
But until recently, they only offered connectivity over the public internet – exactly what critical infrastructure operators needed to avoid. The fundamental architecture of satellite internet services required traffic to flow through the public internet, leaving the possibility open that critical infrastructure control data could be intercepted or modified.
“Critical infrastructure providers know internet access doesn’t provide the level of security they need,” Mr Grove said. “If you use internet access to monitor, protect, view or control critical infrastructure systems, it means there’s a chance it could be accessed from the public domain.”
This security concern isn’t theoretical. Critical infrastructure faces constant cyber threats from both criminal organisations and state-sponsored actors. Water treatment facilities, power generators and telecommunications networks have all been targeted by sophisticated attacks designed to disrupt essential services or steal sensitive operational data.
The consequences of successful attacks can be severe. When cybercriminals compromised a water treatment facility in Florida in 2021, they attempted to increase sodium hydroxide levels to dangerous concentrations. Luckily, a plant operator happened to be looking at a computer screen as a hacker was adjusting the values and their quick action prevented potential harm to thousands of residents. But what if they weren’t there to save the day?
This left utilities with limited options. They could accept the security risk of public internet connectivity, invest heavily in dedicated terrestrial connections or maintain isolated systems that couldn’t benefit from digital tools. The industry needed a third option: satellite connectivity that didn’t traverse the public internet.
Building a private data highway
In 2022, Vocus became the first major telco in Australia to sign an agreement with SpaceX to deliver Starlink Business satellite connectivity to enterprise and government customers.
But signing the agreement was just the beginning of a complex engineering challenge.
According to Mr Grove, the real breakthrough came when Vocus worked with SpaceX to develop a private layer 2 solution over the Starlink satellite service that removes internet access from the network.
This creates a secure pathway combining the speed and coverage benefits of LEO satellites with the security requirements of critical infrastructure.
Think of this as building a private highway system that uses satellite links instead of terrestrial cables. Traditional satellite internet services function like public roads – traffic from multiple users shares the same internet protocol pathways.
Vocus’ solution creates dedicated lanes that bypass public networks entirely, ensuring that critical infrastructure data never remains on an infrastructure provider’s private WAN network and never touches the public internet.
“We are the first carrier globally to privately peer with Starlink for secure customer services,” Mr Grove said.
As Vocus is a critical infrastructure provider itself, Mr Grove said the team know just how important security is when it comes to these assets.
“Our customers have been asking for this from the moment we launched Starlink Business services in Australia. That’s why we developed the service, called Vocus IP-WAN over Starlink Ethernet Access,” he said
The technical complexity of this achievement can’t be understated. Creating private connectivity over satellite networks requires sophisticated integration with Starlink’s network at the core level.
Vocus had to establish direct interconnections with Starlink’s data centres and ground stations, implement custom network configurations, and develop monitoring systems that ensure security policies are maintained across satellite links.
For Mr Grove, the technical achievement is significant, but the human impact is more important.
Infrastructure operators can now deploy secure, high-performance connectivity to remote locations without compromising their security posture.
Water utilities can monitor pump stations in real-time while maintaining the same security standards they apply to metropolitan facilities.
In fact, the satellite connections can become part of their standard private network architecture just like a land-based fibre or NBN connection.
The future can’t afford delays
Australia’s infrastructure expansion requires skilled workers to build new facilities in remote locations. However, if connectivity takes too long to establish, then these vital projects can stall, creating delays that cascade through entire project timelines.
“Wind and solar farms are often in very remote locations where there isn’t a nearby fibre route or a reasonable mobile network, to connect and establish camps or enable employees to build out there,” Mr Grove said.
Construction teams need reliable communications for safety coordination, technical support and basic quality of life. Without connectivity, the workers entrusted to deliver Australia’s future can’t access technical documentation, coordinate with suppliers or maintain contact with families during extended deployments.
Traditional approaches meant waiting six to 12 months for communications access in remote locations, or spending large chunks of valuable project capital on dedicated connections. Either option could cripple a project’s business case.
Vocus’ Starlink services can be deployed in approximately 14 days from contract to activation, and where an asset owner already has private networking through Vocus, the team can then activate the Vocus IP-WAN over Starlink Ethernet Access service in just a few days.
This dramatic reduction in deployment time supports project economics and enables infrastructure development in locations that may have previously been unviable.
“This greatly reduces the cost to deploy, which removes those roadblocks that infrastructure developers face in remote locations,” Mr Grove said.
Defence against disaster
The speed advantage also becomes critical during emergencies. When extreme weather events damage infrastructure, communities need backup communication quickly to access critical information about safety procedures and evacuation routes.
The community then needs to be able to apply for government assistance to rebuild their region – something that relies on digital connectivity that can be securely provided through Vocus IP-WAN over Starlink Ethernet Access.
It’s not just communities that rely on essential services, utilities also depend on each other to keep the country running. But this interconnection can create cascading failures during emergencies. When storms knock out power, telecommunications and water infrastructure need backup energy or they fail as well – and as the industry embraces digitalisation, telecommunications become vital to operating these assets.
The 2019–20 bushfire season was a tragic demonstration of these interdependencies. As the energy sector raced to get the lights back on, power outages led to telecommunications failures, which then impacted emergency services’ ability to coordinate evacuations.
“A lot of mobile towers rely on grid power,” Mr Grove said.
“Many have battery backup, but they only last a relatively short time because these towers require a lot of power.”
Vocus Satellite – Starlink solutions operate differently, they’re not connected to local network infrastructure and don’t rely on local or grid power connectivity. The equipment can operate longer on battery or solar systems, making it easier to maintain during power outages.
“You can be entirely off grid from a communications perspective,” Mr Grove said.
This resilience proves value beyond emergency situations. Remote infrastructure monitoring helps prevent problems before they affect communities. Early warning systems can alert operators to equipment failures, weather-related stress or intruders on-site.
Test launch
Before launching Vocus IP-WAN over Starlink Ethernet Access in June 2025, Vocus trialled the technology with several customers, including a water utility, government agencies and a mining operation.
“We were able to talk to customers about the product, how it would work for them, and make sure we solved their challenges,” Mr Grove said.
The trials revealed applications beyond basic connectivity. Critical infrastructure providers found they could deploy secure communications for temporary construction sites, provide backup connectivity for critical facilities, and establish monitoring systems for remote assets that previously operated without oversight.
Water utilities discovered they could implement real-time monitoring systems that improved their ability to detect problems in real time and respond to them.
Performance exceeded the industry’s – and Vocus’ – expectations.
“We knew that a private access solution over Starlink satellite was going to be successful, but what we found was that it outperformed our estimations,” Mr Grove said.
This success opened new possibilities.
“We thought we were developing one unique solution for connecting to major physical assets, but then customers told us they could also use it to connect remote devices like remote pumps, switches, gates and CCTV,” Mr Grove said.
Government agencies found the technology particularly valuable for monitoring border security infrastructure and coordinating emergency response activities.
Vocus’ approach combines Starlink’s technical capabilities with established network engineering practices. The company established private peering points with Starlink’s network in Sydney and Perth.
This integration allows organisations to apply the same security policies to remote facilities that they use at core locations.
Network administrators can manage satellite-connected sites using the same tools and procedures they use for their land-based connections.
Looking ahead
Vocus is continuing to develop additional services around the Starlink platform.
“It’s a constantly evolving sector, and Vocus aims to be Australia’s satellite system integrator of choice,” Mr Grove said.
But, Mr Grove said solving real problems for Australian customers remains the core focus.
“We know what it takes to operate critical infrastructure, to maintain critical networks and provide services to our customers,” he said.
“We know that if communications assets go down then it can just waterfall into more problems.”
For infrastructure operators, the choice is no longer between security and connectivity. They can have both – and the communities that depend on their services benefit from more resilient, more responsive infrastructure that’s better prepared for Australia’s challenging environment.
For more information, visit vocus.com.au/starlink
