Originally from South Africa, Niel began his IT career at grass roots as a desktop support engineer before venturing into information security. One of his early achievements was implementing the first Checkpoint Firewall-1 cluster at a Dutch bank in Johannesburg.
Niel’s career path led him to the UK, where he gained experience with start-ups and major companies including NTT, Royal Bank of Scotland, and PWC. Returning to South Africa in 2012, he worked at Investec Bank, where he designed security architectures for their online banking platforms, and later was promoted to Head of Architecture as well as held the Global Head of Network Operations positions.
Since relocating to New Zealand in 2019, Niel was responsible for TSB Bank’s core banking tech team before serving as Head of security services and CISO for an Auckland-based MSP. Currently, Niel offers his expertise as a Virtual CISO through his company CyberGrape, assisting multiple businesses with strategic guidance and oversight on their information security programmes.
Niel is proud to offer his expertise and support to Taranaki Foundation to ensure that cyber security is built into the Foundation’s risk profile.
