New Zealand Government Launches the Cyber Security Awareness Week

Cyber crime is a type of crime that is becoming more and more deadly with each passing day. According to statistics, 2000 plus New Zealanders are said to be affected by this kind of crime and it includes not only viruses or malware but also various types of online scam, leak of private information, identity theft, credit card fraud and phishing. Those who have suffered from the extremes of cyber crime know how serious this situation is and how urgently it must be tackled. The New Zealand statistics state that cyber crime has cost the nation $625 million in year 2011.

Realizing the sensitivity of situation, the government of New Zealand together with Netsafe has launched Cyber Security Awareness Week which starts this morning. The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amy Adams, launched the week long events this morning in the Parliament.

Together the government and Netsafe working in Partnership hope to guide their public and especially small businesses of the potential security risks and how they can protect themselves from security breaches. The objective of the Cyber Security Awareness Week is to help individuals and businesses take steps in order to safeguard their sensitive information, regarding themselves or their businesses, from any sort of cyber crime.

This Week has been launched at the same as Cyber Security Week of Australia. The government of New Zealand hopes to take reasonable precautionary steps to deal with cyber crime and with that intention it has increased the amount of investment it used to make in cyber security. The government is following the cyber security strategy and through that strategy a framework has been created to deal with cyber threats and to protect the industry, public as well as the government of New Zealand from security breaches. The government has been taking steps with this regard since the last year. It launched a National Cyber Security Centre with the intention of protecting the government and the industry of New Zealand from the advanced and highly sophisticated cyber threats.

Addressing the launch of Cyber Security Awareness Week, Ms Adams stated that cyber intrusions could be very harmful for the country as it may affect the infrastructure of New Zealand along with the economy and the government services. She further stated that it has now become critical for the public to be aware of the kind of cyber threats and the kind of precautionary steps that must be necessarily taken to ensure protection. The minimum of steps that must be taken to protect information is to have a reliable and efficient antivirus program along with password protection, backing up the important data and making wireless connections secure.

Related article: New Zealand Releases Code To Reduce Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 6/14/2012