Alex Woerndle
Co-CEO, MyEmpire Group
Alex Woerndle is co-founder and co-CEO of MyEmpire Group. He is an experienced IT consultant and infosec professional and has provided security management guidance to leaders in a range of organisations from start-ups through to governments and ASX50 listed enterprises. He has acted as virtual CISO (vCISO) for large and small organisations, helping establish foundational in-house security capabilities and culture. Alex has served over 10 years in voluntary roles as a Non-Executive Director of the Australian Information Security Association, .au Domain Administration Ltd and on the Australian Conservation Foundation Finance, Audit and Risk Committee.
Specialisations
- Cyber Security / Information Security
- vCISO
- Strategy
- Cyber Security Governance, Risk and Compliance
- Board presentations
- Keynote presentations
- Leadership training
- Incident Response Planning
- Security policy and procedures
- Cyber risk
- ISO 27001
- OneTrust GRC
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Founder's story
Alex has lived and breathed cyber security since a major hacking took everything he and his brother, Carl, had built back in 2011.
At the time, they were the owner/directors of DistributeIT, a leading Australian web services provider established in 2002. At its peak, the company serviced 10% of .com.au domain registrations with over a quarter of a million domains registered and 30,000 hosted clients. It was a business they had built over 9 years.
On an afternoon in 2011, a malicious cyber attack was mounted on DistributeIT’s data centres. It was immediately clear this wasn’t just any attack, the hackers were highly skilled, breaking in at an administrator level, and intent on doing severe damage. Here is the full story.
The short of it is the hack triggered a waterfall effect that wiped out DistributeIT in less than three weeks. It was a big enough cyber attack, the hacking group, Anonymous, sent Alex and Carl an email saying it wasn’t them.
The major cyber security incident destroyed DistributeIT. Alex never forgot it. He went on a rampage to skill up on cyber security and to fully understand what he and DistributeIt would have needed to have done to be resilient to a similar attack, aka something malicious and sent by skilful hackers.
In 2013 he started at CQR consulting (today CyberCX) where he worked his way up to National Sales & Marketing Manager learning the business side of cyber security inside out. In 2015 he took a Director role at Australian Information Security Association (AISA), Australia’s peak body for cyber security professionals, where he saw the other side of the coin, the Government’s role in cyber regulation and compliance. He also worked as a cyber security consultant, understanding the workings of online fortification on all types of medium and large size organisations.
When he believed he had the framework figured out. That being: the ultimate strategy to protect a company like DistributeIT from a significant cyber attack in today’s cyber environment, he and Carl started MyEmpire Group.
MyEmpire Group is the answer to ‘what would have saved us last time’ but with modern cyber risks considered. It is the in-house cyber security specialists, knowledge and resources needed to protect companies from today’s sophisticated cyber attacks.