Tag Archive for: NZs

How NZ’s top 3 telcos are protecting Kiwis from cyber threats

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Ahead of Cyber Smart Week and following the cyber attack on Australian telecommunications company Optus, 1News checked in with three major players in the New Zealand market to see how Kiwis are being protected from cyber crime.

The computer hacker who stole the personal data of almost 10 million customers of a telecommunications company in one of Australia’s worst privacy breaches used techniques to conceal their identity, actions and whereabouts, police said on Friday.

But Optus maintains it was the target of a sophisticated cyber attack that penetrated several layers of security.

1News spoke to telecommunications companies, Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees about their security measures and how they help keep their customers’ data safe.

Vodafone/One NZ

Sam Sinnott, spokesperson from Vodafone, said it’s aware of the cyber attack on Optus, “and like all large companies, we take our responsibilities around cyber security extremely seriously”.

“Due to the sensitive nature of this topic, we can’t share more detail with you, however we regularly test and review our cyber security defences, including the technology, processes, and training that we have in place to keep our customers, systems, and employees secure.

“We can also share that DEFEND is an award-winning company themselves and their expertise is invaluable to New Zealand businesses. DEFEND offers a range of threat protection services as well as incident response and security management and has won multiple awards including Microsoft’s New Zealand partner of the year for 2022,” Sinnott said.

At an announcement about the company’s rebrand to One NZ last week, chief executive Jason Paris said Vodafone has a 24/7 manned cyber defence centre.

He said every business customer will have the opportunity to upgrade to Microsoft’s premium security offering as Vodafone becomes One NZ.

“Given what’s happening recently in Australia – the security breaches and the constant attacks that New Zealander’s don’t see but we defend every single day – it’s a great thing for New Zealand businesses,” Paris said.

Paris said the company has a range of world-leading technology solutions that makes sure “we are sensing in real-time all of…

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Microsoft and Manaaki Whenua to map NZ’s forest cover change

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Microsoft and New Zealand Crown Research Institute, Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, are teaming up to develop improved detection of land use and forest cover change in New Zealand.

Microsoft says its AI for Good team will work with Manaaki Whenua’s Remote Sensing team to develop models and methods to assess and monitor changes in land use and land cover at scale. The two organisations will use high-resolution satellite imagery, including datasets from the Planetary Computer. 

It says those are important elements in assessing carbon stored in New Zealand forests, and improved mapping will help inform decisions and policies for a more sustainable Aotearoa.

“The data from this initiative will have practical applications related to understanding changes in carbon sequestration – the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” says Microsoft’s AI for Good programme’s chief data scientist, Juan Lavista Ferres.

Microsoft says these new mapping approaches can be combined with other carbon models to monitor changes in carbon, helping policymakers, urban planners, and the general community consider how their land use affects New Zealand’s climate change goals.

Manaaki Whenua chief scientist Fiona Carswell says Aotearoa New Zealand has ambitious goals to address climate change, and meeting those goals will require many partnerships and collaborations.

“This project with Microsoft is a strong example of working together to enrich our understanding of te taiao (our environment) today and for our future,” she says.

Additional collaboration with Manaaki Whenua and Microsoft, along with other partners, enterprises, and local communities, will develop research that supports government decision-making and policies related to the care of the land and climate change.

Microsoft says as data becomes ever more available at increasing resolution and frequency, techniques like AI and deep learning open new possibilities for monitoring our environment by mapping and measuring the natural world more frequently and with greater accuracy and confidence. 

It says this project is an important step toward realising this aim.

This follows Microsoft’s recent…

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NZ’s line in the sand on cyber attacks

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Foreign Affairs

With cyberattacks on the rise, the Government has laid out how New Zealand’s view of how international law on physical warfare can translate to state-sanctioned hacking online

As more and more of our lives moves into the digital realm, so too do some of our greatest vulnerabilities.

In May, international freight company Toll Group confirmed it had been subject to an attack on its IT systems in a bid to secure a ransom, while the NZX stock exchange has suffered a number of distributed denial-of-service attacks this year. 

Covid-19 has also opened up new avenues for hackers to explore: New Zealand’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which focuses on potentially high-risk events and nationally significant organisations, said the pandemic had “created many opportunities for malicious cyber actors to steal data, commit financial crimes, undertake espionage or disrupt the systems of organisations with a pandemic response role”. 

While some attacks may have purely financial motives, others have more geostrategic factors – and the hand of foreign countries – at play.

Thirty percent of the 352 cyber security incidents the NCSC recorded in 2019/20 had been linked to state-sponsored actors, while Government Communications Security Bureau director-general Andrew Hampton warned in August that “state-sponsored groups almost certainly have the capability and intent to target organisations for the purpose of gathering information about their response to Covid-19”.

But with room for uncertainty over what exactly countries can do to respond, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (with Crown Law) has set out New Zealand’s view on how international law applies to the wild west of cyberspace.

The position paper argues that international rules such as the United Nations charter, the law of state responsibility and international human rights law apply online as much as they do offline.

“Calling someone out, you put the spotlight on it and you bring attention…

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