News & Thoughts from the Axenic Team
Axenic is proud to announce our new product offering which will substantially improve security at government agencies!
Government agencies have been telling us for years that they have struggled to implement the cable colour standards in the NZISM. Hampered by the fact that they don’t own the data centres, that it is hard to discover which cables are carrying which traffic, and that many of the data centres are overseas – agencies have given up. No longer!
This international standard of generic information security controls is widely used across the information security community as a benchmark for implementing good security practices, and has been largely unchanged since 2013. However, earlier this year the updated standard has had more than a facelift – it’s had a full makeover. Fundamentally there are three main changes, which I’ll go into.
Take a moment to imagine a world with gender equality. No bias, no stereotypes, no discrimination. This year’s International Women’s Day focuses on encouraging people to overcome gender biases towards women. We are trying to eliminate gender bias by showing our support and encouraging diversity. We’re very fortunate that our team here at Axenic is made up of a number of passionate and experienced women who are all outstanding professionals in their field. In support and recognition of International Women’s Day this year, we would like to take the opportunity to introduce you to them.
Primarily the story about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is one of great human tragedy. Nothing I write here is supposed to take away from the fact that the main story is about the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
Even at the other end of the world here in Aotearoa New Zealand, however, there will be impacts. Though they may just be echoes of the fury in Europe. It’s no secret that cyber attacks are part of Russian military strategy, nor that New Zealand organisations have been the victims of Russian cybercriminals. So what effects – if any – will the war in the Ukraine have on cyber security here?
Recently I’d been helping a customer negotiate their cyber security insurance – which turned out to be trickier than I expected. This got me thinking about the role that insurance played in cyber security. Then – coincidentally – I was reading a book on security (Paul Martin’s great “The Rules of Security”) and came across this sentence: “Insurance is sometimes described as a means of transferring risk, but it is really more of a mechanism for softening the financial impact of a loss.” (p 73). It got me wondering – at Axenic have we been thinking about insurance all wrong?
A few years ago there was an ad campaign for New Zealand making fun of the fact that we are often left off maps. When looking at cyber security news it often feels like we are missed off the map too. There were plenty of international round-ups of cyber security events for 2021, but few mentioned what happened here in Aotearoa New Zealand. To redress the balance, here’s our list of New Zealand’s publicly reported cyber security events from 2021: