Rare Insight Into Local IT Security Firm

An Ōtaki specialist IT security firm is sharing its winning ways through a case study that has just been published on the Internet.
Aura Software Security Ltd won the 2010 Electra Kāpiti Horowhenua Business of the Year accolade and as a result has allowed its approach and responses to growth to be revealed in a professionally compiled case study to assist other businesses. It will also be made available to the Whitireia New Zealand business studies and to other tertiary learning institutions.

Aura provides specialist IT security services to New Zealand and overseas businesses. Its mission is “protecting our customers from the bad-guys”. To do this they created end-to-end IT security consulting services based on “penetration testing” where they (safely) attack a customer’s websites and IT systems and give the customer feedback

It employs 16 staff. Its head office is in Ōtaki, with offices in Wellington and a sales & business development manager in Auckland servicing customers in Christchurch, Sydney and London.

The case study compiler, Chris Ineson of Driving Forces, describes Aura as a growing, energetic, entrepreneurial business in a very competitive international IT market with a clear sense of where it wants to be. It has identified a niche and is working hard to grow its share of that market.

The company is going through its share of “growing pains” of sufficiency of capital; governance and management structures; operating systems; exporting and marketing expertise and so on.

The case study shows that the company has not only set very high standards for itself but an aspiration that is truly “galactic”.

This is a rare opportunity to see how a local company identifies and understands its market and as a result is changing its structure, its management and taking on the world.

This is the second case study issued by the Electra Kāpiti Horowhenua Business Awards organisers. The first was for the 2009 Electra Business of the Year, Turks Poultry.

Both case studies can be viewed and downloaded from www.electra.co.nz/businessawards/business_of_the_year_case_studies/index.htm