Global professional services provider Ernst & Young has set up two cybersecurity centres, in Auckland and Wellington respectively, in collaboration with Microsoft.
The centres are headed up by EY's cyber security lead for New Zealand, Nicola Hermanson.
Supported by the cloud-based Microsoft Azure Sentinel unified security information and event management (SIEM) system, the centres will allso deliver security orchestration and response (SOAR) along with extended detection and response (XDR) and modern security operations.
Other services to be provided for customers such as dairy cooperative Fonterra include red and purple team testing, advance exercising and incident response, EY said.
Hermanson said New Zealand has experienced unprecedented levels of cyber attacks in recent years, with many of EY's clients being too busy to invest time and resources into detecting and responding effectively to threats, and reducing risks.
EY believes that by having local experts coupled with the firm's global capabilities, it will have an edge on overseas based security providers.
On top of the Auckland and Wellington centres, EY is considering launching a third on in Christchurch.
An EY spokesperson told CRN NZ that the firm already has 50 cyber security staff manning the centres, and is looking to double that within the next year.
Currently, EY has 450 cyber security staff across Australia and New Zealand.
