The leadership team
-
Blaise St-Laurent
Director of Cloud Security
Blaise St-Laurent has been working in security his entire 20+ year career, starting with threat and risk assessments and technical consulting to the Canadian government, pivoting through security network design and its implementation for the New Zealand National Grid through to his specialisation 4 years ago in the Cloud Security field. He has worked with ZX Security since its inception, joining full time 2 years ago, and, in that time he’s reviewed and consulted with on over 50 cloud implementations across Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon’s cloud offering. Previously, he’s held the following roles:
- Lead, design and implementation: PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting to large critical infrastructure clients on their critical security infrastructure.
- Security Engineer: Vodafone, handling the project implementations of their largest government customers
- Security Consultant: IBM
Blaise currently holds trusted cloud advisor roles within large private companies.
Having a technical and cloud background has added a lot of value to our clients needing a technical and leadership and cloud strategy knowledge.
-
Eva Knotkova
Director of Operations & Projects
Eva Knotkova is a Director of Operations & Projects at ZX Security. She manages the projects team and runs operations within ZX. Her background is in procurement and contract management and she ensures the link between our clients and the team is seamless. Eva believes in inclusive and collaborative working styles to deliver the best outcomes. She is an ICAgile Certified Professional (ICP) and has completed the Institute of Directors Company Directors’ Course.
-
Ian White
Chief Executive Officer
Ian White is a 2020 Hi-Tech awards finalist, a 2019 finalist at the CIO Awards for Emerging ICT Leader of The Year and a winner at the 2019 iSANZ awards for Emerging Security Leader. He is also an Agile certified project manager and in the advisory group for the Summer of Tech program. Ian is also a member of NetSafe, an organisation created to promote and educate safety online.
Ian has also completed the Institute of Directors Companies Directors Course and holds an Observer Board position at CoGo. He is also an advisor for Enterprise Ireland.
-
Simon Howard
Founder & CTO
Simon Howard, CTO and founder of ZX Security has been active in the New Zealand information security space for almost two decades. He is a member of the New Zealand Internet Task Force (NZITF), which is a non-profit with the mission of improving the cyber security posture of New Zealand. Simon also co-founded and assists with the running of Australasia’s largest hacker conference, Kiwicon (recently re-branded Kawaiicon). The conference brings together like-minded individuals to discuss the latest advancements in offensive and defensive Information Security tools and techniques.
Simon holds a number of cyber security advisory positions outside ZX Security and has completed the Institute of Directors Companies Directors Course.
-
Steve Honiss
Director of Cyber Strategy & Risk
A board member for Netsafe, Steve Honiss has been with ZX Security since 2020. He has 27 years’ experience in law enforcement, the intelligence community and cyber security roles prior to joining ZX Security. The roles he held prior to joining were:
- CISO: NZ Parliamentary Service
- Manager: National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
- Secondee: INTERPOL’s cyber centre in Singapore
- Manager: NZ Police Cybercrime Unit
He has been involved in NZ Government’s cyber strategy development and has participated in several international cyber policy dialogues.
Steve currently holds vCISO positions within government and SaaS companies on behalf of ZX Security.
Having a deep history within the public sector and the intelligence community has added a lot of value to clients needing a vCISO with a specific risk model.
