The number of cyber incidents recorded by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) increased by more than 60% in 2013.
The NCSC, part of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), has seen an increase in recorded incidents from 134 in 2012 to 219 in 2013.
GCSB Director Ian Fletcher says, “This increase can be attributed in part to greater awareness of the importance of reporting incidents among New Zealand government agencies and critical infrastructure providers, and also awareness of the role and functions of the NCSC.”
The NCSC focuses on the protection of core government networks, the systems that support our critical national infrastructure, and engagement with industry and business to protect our intellectual property and economic assets.
Mr Fletcher says, “The New Zealand experience is broadly in line with international trends for cyber incidents. The majority of those reported in 2013 were targeted towards the private sector (68%), followed by government (20%).”
“The techniques used in cyber incidents make it difficult to identify the instigators.”
Scam and spam related incidents were the largest category of reported incidents at 30%. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and Botnet/Malware activity were the second largest categories, making up 22% and 12% of incidents respectively.
Incidents reported to NCSC are recorded by NCSC personnel once it has been determined that a true security threat has occurred, differentiating them from other common online events.
A copy of the NCSC 2013 Incident Summary is available here [PDF, 485 KB]