Awards honour NZ’s leading cybersecurity professionals

The awards, now on its fourth year, give New Zealand businesses, industry and individuals the opportunity to showcase outstanding achievements in information, cybersecurity awareness and projects.

The awards are organised by iSANZ, the nonprofit organisation set up to recognise the achievements of outstanding New Zealand information security professionals.

“There is extraordinary leadership and growth happening in New Zealand information security. We urge businesses, industry and individuals to enter this year’s Awards to showcase the depth and breadth of their work, skills and talent,” says Kendra Ross, chair, iSANZ board.

Category entries and Hall of Fame nominations close Friday, 14 September 2018.

Dr Ryan Ko

The 2018 iSANZ Award categories are:

Best Security Project or Initiative: Open to companies or organisations who have successfully deployed and implemented an InfoSec project or initiative; Or who have successfully initiated best InfoSec practices.

Best Security Awareness Campaign: Open to companies or organisations who have successfully deployed and implemented a formal security awareness program covering outreach, education and assistance to raise awareness of InfoSec nationally.

Best Security Company of the Year: Open to security companies with superior security products, services or solutions that help customers tackle today’s most pressing InfoSec challenges.

Up-and-coming Cybersecurity Star: Open to all individuals who are newcomers to the world of cyber/information security in New Zealand, and who made a positive and impressive impact to our community.

Best Startup or New Business: Open to new information security / cyber security businesses founded in New Zealand and which have been operating for a maximum of 5 years. This is a new category, says iSANZ.

The organisation also honours a person, event or company that has made a significant contribution to the wider information security community through the Hall of Fame Award.

Nominations can be made by emailing nominations@isanz.org.nz.

Entry information, including category descriptions, judging criteria, entry rules and entry form can be found at www.isanz.org.nz.

2018 iSANZ Award winners will be announced at a gala dinner to be held at Te Papa Museum, Wellington on the evening of Tuesday, 13 November 2018.

Jo Healey of IBM at a CIO forum on cybersecurity

This year’s judges are:

• Ryan Ko – NZ Institute for Security and Crime Science, University of Waikato

• Jo Healey – NZ Global Technology Services Leader, IBM

• Tom Maasland – Partner, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts

• Russell Craig – National Technology Officer, Microsoft

• Catherine Soper – Government Relations Manager, Vodafone

• Debbie Monahan – former Domain Name Commissioner, now independent contractor .nz advisor

• Peter Gutmann – Security researcher, Auckland University

• Adrian van Hest – PwC Partner and National Cyber Leader

• Jordan Carter – Chief Executive, InternetNZ

The 2017 winners were:

Best Security/Initiative: CERT NZ, for building a computer emergency response team for NZ.

Best Security Awareness Campaign: Spark NZ, for online training module ‘The way we work’.

Best Security Company: Aura Information Security

Best International Superstar: Laura Bell

Up-and-coming cybersecurity star: Erica Anderson

Hall of Fame Award: Dr Peter Gutmann

Laura Bell

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