Highlights from CERT NZ Director Rob Pope’s fireside chat

If you missed our latest Fireside Chat with CERT NZ Director, Rob Pope, here are the higlights!

Big thanks to Rob for coming along and sharing his knowledge with our wider community, to Miki Szikszai who doesn’t take much convincing to host these events, to Catalyst for the venue and to NZFB for sponsoring the food and drinks.

New Zealand Financial Brokers are Wellington based insurance brokers and are risk advisers to the NZ Tech Industry.  NZFB Insurance Solutions understand the unique risks and challenges in the IT sector and have developed market leading solutions and this is why we insure a number of New Zealand’s leading IT companies, Gaming companies and Tech Firms.

There were three key messages from Rob, they are:

Hostile environment

CERT NZ is operating in an increasingly hostile environment, with the organised crime threat as prevalent as it has ever been. Rather than rely on a prosecutorial approach, or legislative and regulatory powers, CERT NZ takes the position of growing trust and confidence in the process of identifying and resolving security threats, developing partnerships with all participants in the sector and developing best-practice.

This video is a 12 min clip covering this topic from the chat.

Aotearoa New Zealand as a multi-cultural society

CERT NZ sees itself as operating as an active participant in NZ society, a society that is increasingly multi-cultural. CERT NZ is dedicated to both presenting its information in a way that can be consumed by all cultures and actively recruits new team members that can reflect this society. This means a team that represents all ethnicities and genders, and an internship programme that is focused on developing depth and breadth in cyber security skills. There is still more work to be done, including in the domain of accessibility, and CERT NZ will continue to develop in this regard. Importantly, CERT NZ has no direct ties to the Intelligence community which was a deliberate design decision intended to facilitate open information sharing and ensure that it is a neutral place to seek help and support with cyber security.

Educate and respond

CERT NZ’s overarching role to is to educate and respond to cyber security incidents. From an education perspective there is a lot to be done given the trusting and sometimes naive approach from New Zealanders. CERT NZ’s policy is that there is no wrong door to report an incident or breach. CERT NZ supports NZ organisations by providing guidance on how to design for security, providing practical examples of what good operational systems and practices can look like and filling the gaps where needed when an incident occurs.

The Youtube clip below is a 9 minute take covering CERT’s role to educate and respond in our multi-cultural society.

Please direct any questions or comments to [email protected] in the first instance.