Corporate Vision Cyber GRC Innovators of the Year 2026 & Virtual Technology Leadership Excellence Award 2026 Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Unisphere Solutions is the company behind Minimum Viable Protection (MVP), a world-first platform designed as a response to the growing need for good cyber governance. MVP is a real, live platform that is ready to help organisations qualify and quantify their cyber risk appetite and cyber posture, as well as to provide a remediation roadmap. For more on how it achieves this, as well as the innovation and leadership behind Unisphere Solutions, we caught up with James Dickinson, its vCIO, vCSO, and director. Empowering businesses to secure, grow, and innovate, Unisphere Solutions was founded on the back of James Dickinson’s decade of experience in technology sales, during which he recognised the lack of technology strategy support provided to New Zealand’s mid-market organisations. This view was only compounded during his time spent as CIO for a range of large organisations, where he had plenty of opportunities to engage with other businesses across New Zealand. However, this is not all. During the more than two decades James has spent engaging with technology in both New Zealand and Australia, he has identified a significant gap in strategic planning capabilities across almost all organisations. He explained: “This shows up firstly in business strategy and flows through to poor technology strategy. As a result, the engine of our economy is vastly detuned and underperforming compared to its potential.” James then added: “The proof point is our GDP per capita and our consistently poor productivity stats compared to almost all other modern economies.” Given he is a passionate New Zealander, James really wants to see New Zealand’s businesses succeed, and this means finding a way to support the secure, stable, innovative, cost-effective technology environment that powers every organisation in the country. This is the nexus behind Unisphere Solutions, which brings together leading industry experts across the fundamental areas of cyber governance, assessment, and remediation planning. The environment Unisphere Solutions operates in is one where the gap between boards/senior executives and IT/cybersecurity teams has never been greater. All of this in a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous from a cybersecurity standpoint, and where strict compliance means organisations must have both the knowledge and the ability to achieve an appropriate cyber posture relevant to their cyber risk appetite. Crucially, for most organisations, this does not mean going for the certification of a major cyber standard, as this is simply unrealistic. Instead, James told us: “Roughly 5% of organisations should Unisphere Solutions
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