- Posted February 20, 2025
- Director-General Speeches
Wednesday 19 February, 2025
Prime Minister and Committee members, tēnā koutou katoa
Thank you for this opportunity to update you on the work of the Government Communications Security Bureau.
As New Zealand’s lead organisation for signals intelligence and cyber security, we’re predominantly outward-looking. We provide our customers with intelligence that helps them to make good decisions and to build cyber resilience in a challenging geostrategic landscape.
Today I will provide some brief comments that highlight how we are responding to that environment.
Outward focus
Last year the GCSB provided signals intelligence to government agencies and Ministers on topics ranging from transnational organised crime to foreign interference, to counter terrorism. And once again, the geostrategic shifts occurring in our own region focussed us to identify the security risks for New Zealand.
2024 was characterised by significant conflict globally, and so we worked to support the security of New Zealand Defence Force personnel deployed in conflict regions, for example across the Middle East.
The GCSB also worked closely with colleagues across a range of agencies to ensure the safety of Kiwi civilians in a number of locations across the world.
And while we delivered our own intelligence insights, our international partnerships – particularly within the Five Eyes relationship – were critical in helping our customers to make informed decisions.
Cyber security and building resilience
Last year I spoke about the work underway to integrate New Zealand’s Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT, and the National Cyber Security Centre to create a single lead cyber security agency for New Zealand. While some work is still ongoing, I can report that the key structural changes have been successfully implemented. As a result, we now provide cyber security support to more New Zealanders – from individuals to small and medium businesses, to government, and to our nationally significant organisations. We can now draw together insights across the whole economy to inform our priorities.
That change is timely, as the threats from malicious cyber actors continue to evolve. They are more persistent, more sophisticated, and more capable of causing severe impacts to New Zealanders, and can come from anywhere in the world.
In the last financial year, the National Cyber Security Centre recorded 7,122 cyber security incidents. Of the 343 malicious cyber events targeting New Zealand’s nationally significant organisations, 32 per cent were attributed to state sponsored actors while 19 per cent were linked to criminal actors.
Services such as the NCSC’s Malware Free Networks played a key role in defending New Zealand from these threats by providing detection and disruption through third-party cyber security providers. Since 2021, the span of partners has increased to the point that today the majority of New Zealanders are now covered by MFN. More partners mean more impact, and so we’ve seen an exponential increase in threat disruptions. Separately, we launched the Vulnerability Insights Programme, which detects and notifies customers of their own cyber security vulnerabilities that could affect their systems.
Overall, we’ve increased our engagement with customers to improve our support for their resilience. In the past year we met with businesses, universities and associations to learn how we can help build their defences. In the Pacific there is increasing demand for our capacity building programme that helps island nations to lift their own cyber resilience. And, through my role as Government Chief Information Security Officer, we provided system stewardship for the public sector.
A financially sustainable intelligence agency
While the GCSB mainly looks outwards towards our security environment, the past year has also seen us look inwards at ourselves as an agency, to ensure that in the current fiscal environment we can continue to deliver on our mission.
We embedded baseline savings as part of Budget 24, reducing expenditure on areas such as contractor and consultant spending, travel and financial contingencies.
In company with the NZSIS (as you’ve just heard) we undertook a programme to ensure our workforce is balanced and affordable.
Eyes on the future
Looking ahead, I am pleased to advise the committee that construction of the all-of-government data centre at Whenuapai in Auckland continues to be on time and on budget. It will commence operations before the middle of this year.
Looking further to the future, we’ll continue to sharpen our focus on our core point of difference – that is our signals intelligence capabilities and relationships that underpin our responses to transnational crime, terrorist activity, threats to information, and regional security shifts.
I would like to thank the talented people I am privileged to lead, who are motivated by a deep sense of mission to serve and protect New Zealanders, 24 hours a day seven days a week.
I am happy to answer any questions the committee may have.