My job: Staying safe all part of the job

Martin Cocker says there are huge rewards in making a difference for other people. Photo / Ted Baghurst

Name: Martin Cocker
Role: Executive director of Netsafe
Age: 38
Working hours: 40-hour week plus some evenings and weekends.
Pay: $100,000-$150,000.

What do you do?

As executive director I run Netsafe, a not-for-profit cyber safety organisation. We provide cyber safety education services and generally support the development of safer digital environments by promoting confident, safe, responsible use of New Zealand's online space through websites and resources.

NetSafe works with government agencies, the IT sector, educators, law enforcement and other not-for-profit agencies to achieve that. I also lobby and represent Netsafe on issues and present to conferences and events. We invest a lot of energy into encouraging people to manage their own environment on the web.

Why the concern over cyber safety?

The internet initially was seen as something that wasn't tremendously different from TV or broadcasting. However, that all changed with the advent of Web2 enabling active participation in the web.

How did you get into this job?

I worked in IT for about 12 years, initially in administration, then sales and marketing. I worked about seven years for Renaissance, an IT distributor before moving into their education division Itas (now renamed Renaissance Education Solutions) where I ended up GM for about four years.

After awhile, I started to want to do something more valuable for the community. I knew of Netsafe through the industry and soon realised my technical, business and industry knowledge could transfer to an organisation like theirs in a useful way. I've now been here four years.

Skills and qualities?

You need all the normal business skills that make someone capable of running a medium-sized enterprise, plus fundraising skills and skills in management of fundraising. You need good communication skills. A large part of my role involves sitting down with people, including government,

IT corporate, law enforcement agencies and other not-for-profit workers, and finding ways to make things work across our different cultures. You also need to be able to talk to the media about quite difficult issues in a way that gets the message across quickly and keeps it accurate and absorbable.

That can be quite challenging.

And you must have a passion for what you do because you're not getting paid as well as you would working in a corporate but are often working much longer hours. However, there are huge rewards in making a difference for other people.

Do you have young children?

Yes, a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old. My older child is a technology user. My wife and I believe strongly in the value of technology for everybody and we're confident we can manage the risks he faces, so he experienced and enjoys the gains of technology.

Advice to parents?

The internet is not like TV where once you put children in front of a programme, you can see what they're watching. You must keep an eye on what young children are doing on the internet. That becomes increasingly difficult as children get older so it is really important to teach safety skills and how cyber security works at a young age. Security is also really important. It is difficult to keep people safe when computers are riddled with malware.

Challenges?

Not-for-profit organisations struggle with raising funds. We have a reasonably solid financial base but a big part of my time is spent trying to raise more funds. In a business, you make dispassionate decisions about spending money but it is difficult to do that in an organisation like this when things need to be done whether there is funding or not.

What are the biggest issues?

The biggest challenge in terms of the amount of volume coming through is harassment and bullying. Sexual crimes and grooming of children don't happen often but are very serious when they do.

Another problem is scams and fraud. There are some intelligent scams around now and no one is exempt; there is a scam to fit everyone at one time or another. The Nigerian scam may not fool you, but there will be one that could. So you have to be careful not to become complacent.

Most satisfying project?

All our education resources are good but at this point I'd probably say The ORB (www.theORB.org.nz), because it is the newest. This is a cybercrime-fighting website, designed to streamline all New Zealand's cybercrime complaints and direct them to the responsible agency. This involves a strategic change from advising people about what they should be doing to directly helping them, so it is an interesting shift for us.

Cyber crime confuses people quite a bit and people often don't know where to take things so what we're doing is making it easier for people to report on line criminal activity that is putting people in danger. The single biggest reason a community survives is because people look out for each other. We all have to do our bit and the ORB helps people do so.