17/08/2026
Thank you to the wonderful women of Whangarei who came out to play last night at the August Whangarei Business Womens' Network event.
We were blessed to hear the journey of guest speaker Yolande Wilke, Domain Lead CISO Office, IRD and her tips for ensuring we keep ourselves cyber-safe. Thank you Yolande.
Here's some of her key tips from last night, along with her resource slide on where to get help ...
* Cyber criminals know large businesses have layers of protection which is why SME owners are often an easier target
* MFA - multi-factor authentication is now the standard as a password is no longer sufficient
* What keeps NZ business leaders awake at night? Last year an AI breach ranked at 6%, this year, it ranks as 23%
* AI is fantastic for assisting us, it's also a great tool to help criminals scale faster - use it with care and diligence
* Email remains the number 1 method for cyber criminals to target businesses - be alert when clearing your emails. Pause & check who sent it; l9ook for unusual requests involving money, invoices, gift cards or bank charges; ALWAYS verify payment requests by phone. In summary - trust, and verify.
* Keep your phone and computer software up to date
* Back up your biz data and test regularly to check it's working
* Secure your customer information - if you were your customer, would you be satisfied with the level of security of your personal data?
* Take care with social media