Our very own CERT team has arrived

Simon Bridges opened CERT NZ yesterday. Photo / File

From yesterday, New Zealand officially has its own Computer Emergency Response Team or CERT, just like the big countries do, to keep a watchful eye on bad things in cyberspace.

Communications minister Simon Bridges opened CERT NZ which was announced last year, and is funded to the tune of $22.2 million until 2020.

To non-techies, a CERT sounds like dial a geek tech support when your computer dies, and it is a little related to that but to do with cyber security instead.

New Zealand is to be honest really late to the party with its CERT. Like so many tech things, the original CERT sprung up in the United States in 1988, at the Carnegie Mellon University, apparently in response to malware worming around in networks, one of which choked the internet of the time.

The idea behind a CERT is for it to be a trusted source when something bad happens on the internet, publishing advisories and links to remedies and protective measures, and sharing information with other cyber security organisations locally and overseas.

There is a website up already at https://cert.govt.nz (but not at https://cert.nz which is curious) and it appears to be safe and secure with transport layer security (that's the padlock in your browser that indicates your connection to a site is encrypted).

Currently, the CERT NZ site only carries two alerts. CERT started adding staff in August last year and the 14 who hang out there now are likely to get busy very quickly.

The internet is a warzone and not a day goes by without something bad happening. At least there's a place for New Zealanders and their businesses and other organisations to report incidents and seek advice now.

It'll get worse too, as the internet continues to grow at a rapid pace. At internet scale, even rare and unusual events that might have happened once in a blue moon on smaller networks will happen more frequently and affect many more systems - and people: some 3.8 billion of us are connected to the same general purpose technology, the internet.

We can't make do without the internet any more, and CERT NZ should really have been in place a decade ago to build up the necessary experience. Furthermore, it begs the question if 14 staffers are enough given the size of CERT NZ's job and shouldn't the office be in Auckland which is the cynosure of our cyber?

Also, it's election this year, and it'll play out very much on the internet. New Zealand is probably not important enough to attract The Troll Armies of Social Media, seeking to influence the general vote.

On the other hand, we are still a United States ally, and a strategically placed albeit stationary and somewhat shaky aircraft carrier in the Pacific. We might see some action in that arena, and it'll be interesting to see if CERT can be of use here too, a very different layer on the network than physical cables, computer systems and the usual malware threats.

Either way, better late than never; welcome to our cybers, CERT NZ.