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Ongoing cyber attacks on the New Zealand Stock Exchange could affect all New Zealanders with a KiwiSaver account, says the head of a KiwiSaver provider.
Photo: Supplied / NZX
Simplicity CEO Sam Stubbs said cyber attacks could force investment schemes to close until normal service is resumed.
The NZX has been affected by sophisticated denial-of-service-style attacks.
The government has ordered the nation’s spy agency, the Government Communications Security Office, to help solve the problem.
Stubbs said that if the stock market remains low for a couple more days, it will be difficult to set a fair price for investments.
The attacks had been a wake-up call and lessons needed to be learned from them, Stubbs said.
“These attacks come from anywhere in the world, they travel at the speed of light,” he said.
“New Zealand is not immune to it, and I think this is a very important lesson for everyone: we are not ignored, we are clearly attacked.”
Last Friday, the stock exchange suffered its fourth day of offshore cyberattacks, overwhelming the NZX website.
Stock trading was temporarily suspended because investors were unable to see the company’s updated announcements, leading to an uninformed market.
After trading resumed, the benchmark NZX-50 index was down about 40 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,012, about 100 points below an all-time high.
The technology website ZDNet said that cyberattacks had occurred around the world for the past two weeks, but the NZX was one of the worst hit.
Other financial services companies affected by the attacks include global payments company PayPal, and money transfer companies Braintree and Worldpay.
