Tag: Cyber-security

Axenic’s 2025 year in review: The cyber risks that caught everyone’s attention

By Tim Rosenbrook, on

It has been a noisy year on the New Zealand cybersecurity front. Between regulatory shifts, the “always-on” threat of ransomware, and the scramble to secure remote workforces, finding clear, actionable advice hasn’t always been easy.

At Axenic, we’ve spent the last 12 months sifting through the cybersecurity headlines to send you only what matters. We didn’t just want to add to your inbox; we wanted to arm you with “plain English” clarity.

Now that the dust is settling on 2025, we’ve gone back through our data and in this blog we take a look at what actually grabbed your attention.

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Axenic Lightning Talks Series – March 2025

By Axenic Team, on

A few years back, we kicked off our own internal lightning talks—our way of having a good old geek-out over cybersecurity topics that get our Governance, Risk, Assurance, and Compliance brains buzzing. Think of it as a slightly more structured version of those deep and meaningful yarns we used to have around the office coffee machine… before COVID did its thing and made us all experts in online meetings awkwardness instead.

These blogposts are not written by one team member. The content is provided to you by the whole Axenic Team – or whomever attended on the day.

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2021’s Cyber Security Events: A New Zealand Perspective

By Doug Newdick, on

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:

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The Grass Looks Greener from Here: Cyber Security Should Be Like Health and Safety

By Doug Newdick, on

All the experts agree – cyber security should be an organisation-wide concern.  And yet, in my experience too many organisations, and too many people in those organisations think that cyber security is solely the concern of (a) the security team, or (b) the IT/digital team. In case you need convincing my favourite response is that if there is a cyber-attack (or incident) then it is not the IT team’s job that is at risk, but part of the organisation (if the HR system is compromised it is the HR team who won’t be able to work, not the IT or security teams). Who knows what the impact is of an attack? It’s not IT, that’s for sure. And who is best placed to balance off the needs of the organisation with the cyber risks? It’s not security: if you left it up to me, I’d turn everything off! That’s the only way to be sure (and I get no benefit from it being on, so…)

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July 2021 Newsletter – Axenic Cybersecurity Commentary

By Tim Rosenbrook, on

Hot off the virtual press is our latest monthly cybersecurity update. Our popular round-up of some of the cybersecurity-related events over the past month that caught our eye.  This edition includes our thoughts on the recent Kaseya hack, an emerging job sector for Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Negotiators and what not to post in online forums when you have access to classified information.  Read up on all this and more in the latest newsletter here. 

Cybercrime is the gift that keeps giving

By Doug Newdick, on

Being the grinches that we are we thought that instead of giving you a gift this Christmas we’d give you a warning! You’ll get a lot of messages over the next few days and weeks wishing you season’s greetings. Amongst them though, will be well-wishers with more sinister motives. My family has already received a scam SMS: it told us we had a package with an outstanding duty payment on it (of $2) and we just needed to follow the link to pay the amount and release our package. This is pretty typical of delivery scams that many kiwis are receiving at the moment. Luckily we had a bit of skepticism and a handy cybersecurity expert to seek advice from!

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