Technology Innovator Awards 2026 | 5 target accreditation against a major standard, and around 15% of organisations are arguably too small to take a formal approach to cybersecurity. This leaves 80% of the market that absolutely needs to align their cyber posture with their risk appetite to achieve an appropriate level of cybersecurity.” There to support the market with everything from cyber assessments to cybersecurity audits, Unisphere exists to provide the virtual IT leadership organisations need, on demand through ad hoc or retainer-based engagements. Its support covers chief information officer (CIO), chief digital officer (CDO), chief security officer (CSO), and chief technology officer (CTO) capabilities, thus allowing mid-sized organisations to engage with field experts at an accessible rate. “This injection of capability fills the gap that most commonly exists on most senior leadership or executive teams in New Zealand’s mid-market organisations, which is defined by companies with greater than $25 million in revenue and less than $250 million in revenue.” Minimum Viable Protection (MVP) is the primary way in which Unisphere Solutions is responding to New Zealand’s calls for better cyber governance, with this being the only platform of its kind to seek input from the governance layer within a client’s organisation, which includes the board and senior executives, through a simple questionnaire covering key topics all related to governance. Simply put, this allows the platform to score the cyber risk appetite for the organisation, assessing five crucial areas based on the perceived impact of a cyber event. These areas span the impact in revenue or ability to trade, the impact on reputation, the impact on the regulatory environment governing the organisation, the likely impact on sensitive information or PII data, and the organisation’s overall business risk appetite. James commented: “This allows us to produce an overall risk appetite score, as well as an individual score for revenue risk, reputational risk, regulatory risk, and PII or sensitive data risk. Having individual risks as well as an overall risk score is critical to the success of our novel approach. We then use our patented approach to scoring how secure an organisation is, otherwise known as your cyber posture.” MVP’s cyber posture is aligned with the major standards of ISO/ IEC 27001-2022, NIST-CSF, and CIS V8, with the team having control mapped these three standards to align them, then grouped the controls into 20 common and local groupings. A maturity assessment was then developed for each grouping. Essentially, this allows MVP to assess an organisation’s posture by asking it to select its level of cyber maturity against the 20 key control groups, without having to carry out a lengthy and highly technical assessment. This makes the cyber assessment relevant, rapid, and achievable for mid-market organisations. Once the cyber risk appetite and cyber posture score are both achieved, and represented as a number out of five, James and the team can begin the required uplift for an organisation to reach the minimum viable protection state or appropriate cyber posture. Here, the client’s organisation is invited to attach evidence items against its self-scored posture, with these notes able to cover each of the 20 control group selections. MVP then has the capability within its platform to invite an independent auditor to assess these items. As for the cyber remediation plan itself, this is tailored to the needs of the organisation in question, with the overarching aim being to lift the posture to be at or even slightly above the cyber risk appetite. Unisphere Solutions’ cyber GRC innovators do this by looking at the gap between the current score per control and the target score, before ranking these remediation items based on what they will address and how important that areas is. Exploring this further, James said: “The remediation plan articulates what needs to be done to lift the posture to an appropriate level using what we call the four Ps. 1. You need a person or resource to perform an action, 2. You need a policy to fill an identified gap, 3. You need a documented procedure or process to ensure actions are undertaken correctly and consistently, 4. You need a platform or product to close a technical capability gap.” The MVP platform again proves incredibly useful here, allowing the client to follow the stated cyber remediation plan, updated their posture based on delivering/achieving each of the remediation items, and automatically rescoring the posture in order to track progress. This leads to cyber risk appetite being articulated in a meaningful way, allows the technology team to share how secure they are, and provides access to targeted, critically ranked remediation. “This keeps all parties aligned and focused on a common goal in what is usually a highly technical and amorphous domain area. This is the true power of the minimum viable protection approach and SaaS application.” Real, live, and available for organisations to subscribe to in order to get on top of their cyber remediation roadmap, MVP is undoubtedly up there with the best cyber GRC platforms. With Unisphere Solutions also partnering with managed service providers to deliver its independent platform directly to customers, the paradox of vendor-led cyber strategy is also solved. Finally, by covering capability and plugging the knowledge gaps that are always going to exist in organisations, MVP is proving itself to be the ‘MVP’. Offering all of this at just a fraction of the cost of a client’s current providers, Minimum Viable Protection is certainly something organisations should check out if they are looking to get the most out of fortifying their cybersecurity. The jewel in the crown of Unisphere Solutions’ portfolio, the platform has undoubtedly played a huge part in the company’s recognition with two titles here in our Technology Innovator Awards 2026. More on the platform, the company, and its team can be found at the links below. Contact: James Dickinson Company: Unisphere Solutions Web Address: https://www.mvp.kiwi/ & https://www. minimumviableprotection.com/ & https://unisphere.co.nz/
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