Wellington defends the machinery of a nation from a city of half a million people. New Zealand’s capital concentrates the public service, the national health system, the tax authority, and the accident insurer covering everyone in the country, alongside a homegrown technology scene built around one of the world’s original online marketplaces. The cybersecurity leaders below split roughly between those two worlds, and several have spent the better part of a decade in the same seat.
Katrina Banks – CISO, Department of Internal Affairs
Katrina Banks spent more than five years as security manager at the Department of Internal Affairs before becoming its Chief Information Security Officer in December 2025. DIA issues passports, registers births, deaths, and marriages, supports local government, and regulates gambling, which means its systems hold information tied to the identity of nearly every New Zealander. Banks took executive ownership of an environment she already knew in operational detail, a path less common in a capital where security leaders are often recruited from outside.
Matthew Rounthwaite – CISO, ACC
Matthew Rounthwaite joined the Accident Compensation Corporation in 2016 as information security manager and stepped up to Chief Information Security Officer in February 2018. His tenure in the seat now runs past eight years. ACC is New Zealand’s no-fault accident insurer, covering every person in the country who is injured, and its files hold some of the most sensitive health and personal information in the public system. Eight years of institutional memory in one of the country’s most consequential security roles is itself a form of control.
Peter Booth – National CISO (Acting), Health New Zealand
Health New Zealand, Te Whatu Ora, was formed in 2022 by merging twenty district health boards into a single entity with a workforce of around 80,000. Peter Booth spent two years as its group manager for security services and performance before taking the acting National CISO role in August 2025. His programme defends both a vast clinical estate and an organisation still consolidating, where legacy systems from two dozen predecessor agencies sit alongside new national platforms.
Yolanda Wilke – Domain Lead, CISO Office, Inland Revenue
Yolanda Wilke has worked in security at Inland Revenue for nearly seven years, leading a domain in the CISO Office since September 2022. The department holds the financial records of every earner and business in New Zealand and processes the taxes that fund the public services the rest of this list defends. Wilke works at the governance centre of that operation, shaping how one of the government’s largest data custodians manages risk day to day. She holds CISSP and CGRC certifications.
Kate Pearce – Head of Security, Trade Me
Kate Pearce has been Head of Security at Trade Me since February 2019, defending the online marketplace where New Zealanders buy and sell everything from cars to houses to secondhand furniture. That scale makes the platform a standing target for fraud, account takeover, and marketplace scams. Pearce holds a master’s degree in computer security and is a regular presence at New Zealand security conferences and in its working groups, where she is among the more recognisable figures in the community.
Nick Tucker – Head of Information Security, The Co-operative Bank
Nick Tucker has led information security at The Co-operative Bank since January 2018, a tenure approaching nine years. The bank is small beside the Australian-owned majors, but its customer-owned structure makes member trust its core asset. In an institution that size, the security leader knows every system, vendor, and control personally, and nine years gives Tucker one of the longest runs of any security head in New Zealand financial services.
Pia Lange – Head of Security and Technical Assurance, Sharesies
Pia Lange joined Sharesies in 2022 and rose through the company’s security ranks over four and a half years, most recently as security and regtech manager, before becoming Head of Security and Technical Assurance in July 2026. Sharesies is the Wellington-born investing app that opened sharemarket access to hundreds of thousands of everyday New Zealanders, many of them first-time investors. Lange’s path gave her both the technical and the regulatory sides of fintech defence.
Trust at National Scale
Security leadership in Wellington is largely public work. Banks, Rounthwaite, Booth, and Wilke defend institutions every New Zealander relies on, often without knowing it: passports and identity records, accident cover, the hospital network, the tax system. Pearce, Tucker, and Lange carry the same standard into the marketplace, bank, and investing platform people choose for themselves. Tenure runs long here. Rounthwaite has held his seat eight years, Tucker nearly nine, Pearce more than seven, and Banks and Lange both climbed internally over half a decade. In a capital this size, the people these leaders protect are the ones they run into at the supermarket.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
- At the Edge of the Map: Auckland’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
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- The River City’s Watchtowers: Brisbane’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Tucson’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Calgary’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.