InfoSecNZ

InfoSecNZ is a Discord-based community of likeminded people, who all share a common interest in information security. To be part of InfoSecNZ you must be either in New Zealand, or have strong ties to the country.

To join, just reverse this Base64: aHR0cHM6Ly9kaXNjb3JkLmdnL2luZm9zZWNueg== – once you join, you’ll need to read the rules and click the green checkbox at the end, which should grant access to all the channels. If you have any problems or questions, feel free to email Eric at aW5mb3NlY256QGVyaWNsaWdodC5jbw== (Base64 for protection from scrapers)

InfoSecNZ is run by a team of six admins who are dedicated to the wellbeing of our community. All of us have been part of InfoSecNZ since ~2017, as well as being engaged across a variety of other infosec communities. Thanks to normal biorhythm variation, there’s likely to be an admin online for at least 20 hours a day!

@Rhyven (Eric)

Hamilton; community is everything, been around ISO31000/27001/1337 and SOC2, love people, beer, whisky, coffee, EVs, and artisanal shaving. (He’s on occasion known to be witty and humorous… although this is a work in progress and should not be relied upon in production). With an extensive career in InfoSec he’s recently moved his gaze to protecting the skies working for a national airline supporting their cybersecurity practice. When he’s not securing the skies he’s often found attending Cons and ISIGs (and co-organising Hamilton ISIG), and pretty much anything social with like-minded folk! If you see Eric in person feel free to go say hi - but introduce yourself by both your name and your handle, because identities are hard.

@Stefan

Aucklandstralia; loves his beer, curator of cured meats, budding pitmaster / smoker madman extraordinaire, DIY, motorbikes, MTB and general outdoors activities - when he’s allowed out from young family duties he enjoys a brew and good banter. By day he’s a hands-on Sec Engineer for a 100% remote global company, where he loves creating secure ways for people to do their jobs better and faster. Always tinkering with something!

@Emsk

Auckland; Microsoft Security Suite (think E5 and all the bells/whistles/random noises that come with that), all things <3 especially cattos and kitters (we have been assured that they are not plotting to take over the world just yet), our resident crafty type with an extreme range of skills - arty projects? cooking projects? home furnishings? odds are Emsk will have a view on how to approach it, and what the best brush, frypan, paint, or airfilter could be! Security Engineering with Engineering folk who do Engineer things that aren’t Security Engineer things.

@Tene

Auckland (confirmed not a JAFA); if you had to personify GRC, you’d get pretty close with Tene. A poker face that will make you question your own sanity, and once killed a man over the phone. A penchant for Latin and beer (particularly Knife Party by Liberty); and will remind you if you ever attend a CAB “Qui tacet consentire videtur” - “they who are silent are assumed to consent”. So speak up, be heard! In the modern language and day you’ll find Tene wearing a goose pin, enjoying craft beer, and sharing war stories of his extensive career in a number of locations around the globe!

@Noodles

Auckland; OWASP, WebDev, 20/30 minutes in all things IT (programming and general techno-enthusiast)…by minutes we mean years! Having worked in WebDev in the turn of the millennium (remember Bebo, Livejournal, Myspace… Comic Sans?) - Noodles was there. Now by day a strong leader specialising in product security for a global SaaS provider. You’ll likely see him at ISIG and Con’s (look for the guy with the beard..there can’t be many right?) - although, don’t call him a grey-beard* just yet (he assures us all that it’s natural and there are no grey hairs in sight)! *note not to be confused with @gr4ybeard, who is someone entirely different

@NovemberMike (Nic M)

Wellington; Mangler/Leadership type, enabler, likely knows someone who knows someone who can help, whiskey, gaming, remover of obstructions. Coming from a background in Banking and then moving quickly into Tech and PHYSEC, dipped a toe in…fell head-first and now encompasses all things Cybers/INFOSEC and people engagement/translation (acronym buster, engineering to business speak). Will tinker and patch all the things when you’re not looking.

InfoSecNZ was founded on 2017-05-06 by Kim Carter (@BinaryMist), a frequent speaker at NZ information security conferences, and author of PurpleTeam. Kim identified an unfilled need for a place where New Zealand’s Information Security community could come together and share their projects and passions. To meet that need, he created the InfoSecNZ Slack instance.

By February 2018, the Slack had grown enough that three additional admins were brought on to assist: @SparkleOps, @Noodles, and @Rhyven. After @SparkleOps’ departure from NZ a year later, @Rhyven and @Noodles continued as the main admins of the Slack until April 2023; @BinaryMist had stepped back from the Slack over the years to pursue his other passions, but remained the Workspace Owner over the Slack itself.

As the community grew, the Slack platform struggled to keep pace with the needs of the growing community. By 2021 the Slack was seeing in excess of 11,000 messages per week, and membership was approaching 900 users. At the time, the free tier of Slack only held 10,000 messages, so a conversation the week prior would be lost to the sands of time.

At the same time, the community was becoming less of a cybersercurity forum, and more of a community hub where people - originally connected by a passion for security - now were living part of their lives on InfoSecNZ. The security-specific channels (e.g., #cloud-security or #developer-security0 were virtually dead, while the #delicious-morsels channel was overflowing with photos of dinners, recipes, and conversation about brewing beer. The #ask-anything channel was just as likely to see someone looking for a good air purifier or window vaccum, as it was to see questions about selecting a password manager. InfoSecNZ had become a community of people, not simply a community of specialists.

On 2022-07-20, conversation again turned to the limits of Slack’s free tier, and the subject of migrating to a more modern platform - Discord - was again floated by the membership. At this time @Rhyven took the opportunity to register a new InfoSecNZ Discord server, however no effort to migrate was made until 2023-03-12 - when things began moving in earnest. A new, bigger group of admins were selected; rules were written; channels were created; and a bot was configured to enforce a manual acceptance of the rules before gaining entry.

The new Discord was officially launched on 2023-04-19, and since then InfoSecNZ has been located on Discord.