Published on the 22/07/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
New Zealand-based Wynyard Group has opened an Asia Pacific Operation Centre in Sydney, more than doubling its Australian headcount and boosting its data analytics capabilities…
Listed New Zealand-based crime analytics and threat assessment specialist Wynyard Group has boosted its local capabilities in data science by opening an Asia Pacific Operation Centre in Sydney, allowing it to offer a full range of services from sales and deployment to advanced analytics. Craig Richardson, Wynyard managing director, said that it was important for Australian clients that the company was able to provide extra local skills and ensure that data sovereignty was maintained in Australia.
“It’s quite important the data does not travel outside the country,” he said.
While at present all Australian users of the Wynyard software have installed it on their own infrastructure, Richardson is considering rolling out a locally hosted software-as-a-service version of its system to match the cloud services already available for customers in New Zealand, the Middle East and UK.
He said that a cloud-based solution would ensure customers had access to the latest data algorithms and greater cost efficiencies. Richardson said that Wynyard was working through a couple of sales opportunities in Australia and if they bore fruit it would establish a locally hosted cloud service.
Wynyard, which was born out of New Zealand’s Jade software business, has a strong crime analytics pedigree, having bought its investigating case management solution from the Australian Federal Police and its digital forensics solution from the New Zealand Police.
The company supplies software and services to government departments, banks and other organisations which must adhere to anti money laundering and counter terrorism financing regimes. It writes algorithms that can scour everything from financial transactions to mobile phone records in a bid to identify patterns that might suggest criminal activity.
Richardson said that around 65 percent of the company’s revenues came from Asia Pacific with strong demand in the region particularly for tools that could identify patterns in data which could help pinpoint organised crime and drug trafficking.
He said that the rise of big data was also driving demand for innovative solutions to help identify potential criminal or fraudulent activities.
That is helping boost the company’s share price which has risen by more than 80 percent over the last 12 months, to $NZ2.02 at time of writing.
The company has also assembled a wealth of international talent with experience in monitoring crime. The company’s director of law enforcement, Bob Murrill who has over 30 years’ experience at the Metropolitan Police and financial crime expert Jim Oakes, were both in Australia this week to coincide with the formal opening of the new operations centre.
