Movers and shakers: James Dring joins Compac as global business technology director

James Dring of Compac

Dring was the CIO of IAG New Zealand for over five years, and in 2008, moved to Australia to work as a business consultant and was also NSW practice manager for Costs Down Revenue Up. In the latter, he managed a team of procurement, analysts and strategy specialists.

Warren Hughes has been appointed to the role of General Manager – Auckland with independent IT consultancy Equinox IT. Before this Warren was Head of Product Development at Fronde and Chief Technology Officer at Lotto New Zealand.

Warren Hughes

Peter Dengate Thrush has been appointed to the advisory council of the Washington DC-based Center for Democracy Technology (CDT). CDT plays a leading role in free speech, privacy, internet governance and architecture issues affecting democracy and civil liberties on the global Internet.

“I am excited to be engaging with and assisting CDT at a time when many key principles of freedom on the Internet are being tested around the globe” says Dengate Thrush.

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Dengate Thrush is the former chair of InternetNZ and of ICANN, and has been active for more than 20 years in developing Internet’s institutions, policies and governance standards.

Modica Group has acquired New Zealand owned messaging company Run The Red.

“With most New Zealand mobile messaging companies having sold out to Australian or International buyers, it is refreshing to be a part of a New Zealand led success story, and a story that doesn’t end here. Already both companies have an international presence and are executing on high growth strategies. Now as one focused group, with over 30 years combined experience, we plan on redefining the global enterprise messaging market,” says Modica Group CEO Stuart Wilson.

Run The Red manages hundreds of mission critical messaging services for clients in the telco, IT, finance, government, health, education, media and entertainment sectors.

All of the Run The Red teams have taken new positions at Modica Group, including Run The Red’s founder and CEO – Ben Northrop who is now Group Chief Marketing Officer.

Stuart Wilson, director – CEO, Modica Group

Cloud video production platform 90 Seconds has announced it has raised US$7.5 million in Series A financing led by Sequoia India. Sequoia has invested in several of the world’s most famous companies including Apple, Google, YouTube and Airbnb.

The round, supported by SKY TV NZ, Airtree Ventures, Beenext and Fotolia.com founder Oleg Tscheltzoff, will accelerate 90 Seconds’ global expansion as the market leader in cloud video production.

“Video content is a must have in today’s world and we are proud to have developed a solution that works for brands around the globe to deliver fast, affordable content,” says Tim Norton, founder and CEO of 90 Seconds. “We are excited to work with our new and existing investors who understand the opportunity 90 Seconds has to completely change the global video production landscape.”

ThisData has released a risk-scoring algorithm that will reduce the number of login anomaly alerts generated by a factor of 10. ThisData provides login intelligence to the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry to help identify fraudulent activity on a user’s account, by monitoring how a user typically accesses the service and alerting on login anomalies.

ThisData founder Rich Chetwynd says the new algorithm means ThisData can now add in a number of new factors to the service. “The new approach still takes into account things like a user’s known browsers, devices, locations, and velocity between event locations but we now have the ability to introduce a number of new vectors. First off the rank is a check against high risk IP addresses and TOR exit nodes.”

TOR is the browser that hides a user’s location by bouncing the connection around through a number of secure access points. ThisData now monitors for TOR exit nodes – where the connection emerges back into the legitimate internet – as a way of ensuring unauthorised access to data is flagged in real time.

“A large number of TOR users are clearly doing so for suspicious reasons. Recent data suggests a large percentage are using TOR maliciously and we want to make sure ThisData customers are protected in that scenario.” says Chetwynd.

ThisData founder Rich Chetwynd