Nuix appoints former Fujitsu International President Rod Vawdrey

Nuix, the Australian-owned worldwide leader in cybersecurity, investigation and intelligence technology solutions, has today appointed Rod Vawdrey, a former Corporate Executive Vice President of Fujitsu Limited Global, to its leadership team. 

As Nuix’s new Chief Operating Officer, Mr Vawdrey takes responsibility for overseeing the company’s business activities globally, including sales operations, information technology, human resources, training, facilities and strategic projects and partnerships.  

A key focus for Mr Vawdrey will be the company’s efforts to highlight to executive leaders the importance of having cybersecurity policy frameworks in place to help protect their organisations from serious data breaches.

Mr Vawdrey has been an IT and innovation business leader for more than 30 years, having previously held the position of CEO and Executive Director of Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand.

Nuix’s CEO, Eddie Sheehy said Mr Vawdrey’s appointment is a major coup.

“We’re extremely proud and privileged to have Rod join our executive team and his experience will help us take the company to a new level,” said Mr Sheehy. “Rod could easily be running any Fortune 500 or ASX-listed company but he has chosen to be part of Nuix.”

Mr Vawdrey said his decision to join Nuix was driven by his vision to empower organisations to turn big data into actionable intelligence and change the way organisations considered the ever-present and increasing threat of cybersecurity breaches.

“Corporate and government organisations are increasingly at risk of serious cyber-threats which can have disastrous effects on their operations, financial strength and reputation,” Mr Vawdrey said.

“While technology can help address the risks, it is not enough on its own, especially when nearly half of all cybercrime incidents and security breaches emanate from within organisations themselves. 

“That’s why I see the need for a major shift in culture around data security at the highest level.

“There is a real need to bridge the gap at the executive level so that CEOs embrace and promote a culture of cybersecurity in addition to technology software to protect them from cyber-threats.”

Nuix has been working closely with government and corporate organisations to help them develop integrated policy and technology frameworks for cyber security. Nuix was involved in the Prime Minister’s Cyber Security Review briefing and is currently engaged in further government-led cybersecurity breach workshops. 

Nuix provides investigations, intelligence and cybersecurity software solutions for the world’s top intelligence and security agencies, financial institutions, corporations and government departments including INTERPOL, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Federal Police. Nuix’s diverse global footprint is evidenced by 55% of revenues being generated from customers in the United States, 31% from the EMEA region and 13% from the APAC region and the rest of the world.

Nuix recommends that organisations focus their cybersecurity efforts on very specific and definable targets, namely their critical-value data and the very limited ways in which someone could access, gather and send out that data from their network.

Mr Vawdrey says building a culture of security must be a top priority for executives, starting with an understanding of where the organisation keeps its data ‘crown jewels’ and then putting a strategy in place to protect them.