- Posted July 26, 2018
- Media Releases
Government Communications Security Bureau’s (GCSB) CORTEX cyber security initiative has been recognised for building trust and confidence in Government.
The Bureau’s delivery of the suite of cyber security services won the Deloitte Institute of Public Administration of New Zealand (IPANZ) award for “Building Trust and Confidence in Government” announced in Wellington last night.
GCSB Director-General Andrew Hampton says the award recognised the efforts of staff across the Bureau to build and sustain trusted relationships with a broad cross section of New Zealand’s most significant organisations.
“By the very nature of the work that we do much of it needs to be carried out in secret. To be able to do this work and achieve our mission we need strong public trust and confidence,” Mr Hampton said.
“While many New Zealanders are more familiar with our intelligence gathering work, the GCSB also has an important role to play in providing information assurance and cyber security services.
“This award recognised the efforts of the GCSB team, particularly the staff in our National Cyber Security Centre(external link), to build and deliver the CORTEX capabilities and to develop and sustain the trusted relationships that enable us to help protect the information and data of New Zealand’s most significant organisations.
“CORTEX was established in 2014 to provide protection services to government agencies and crucial national infrastructure. There was strong uptake, with nearly all of the organisations offered CORTEX services signing up.
“To help quantify the economic benefits of CORTEX capabilities, we developed a model with the help of an international professional services organisation to assess the cost avoided by CORTEX capabilities preventing advanced cyber threats from causing harm.
“Application of this ‘cost avoidance’ model to threats dealt with through CORTEX in the 2016/17 year resulted in a conservatively estimated ‘gross reduced harm benefit’ of $39.47 million. This was before CORTEX was fully implemented.
“The ongoing delivery of our cyber security services requires us to continually demonstrate we are responsible stewards of our customer’s information – both to customers, and to the range of oversight bodies we are also accountable to.
“I hope that this award helps to further demonstrate a significant turnaround in how the work of the Bureau is perceived and I am hugely proud of that.
“We are currently planning for the next stage of delivering our cyber security services, with the roll out of a Malware Free Networks capability to a broader range of nationally significant organisations,” Mr Hampton said.
Further information about CORTEX is available on the GCSB website.
Media contact: 04 819 7104 or media@nzic.govt.nz