Is Cybersecurity Your Fleet's Next Headache?

Last week I had the absolute privilege of presenting at two Brake & AfMA NZ Fleet & Safety Seminars — Wellington on the 25th and Christchurch on the 27th — on a topic that concerns me more with every month that passes: connected fleet cybersecurity.

The core message I wanted to leave both rooms with was simple: this isn't a country-of-origin problem, it's an architecture problem. Norway's Ruter Transport recently found hidden SIM cards capable of remote immobilisation across 850 buses — not because of who built them, but because of how deeply connected vehicle systems have become, and how little visibility fleet operators often have into what sits inside that connectivity.

New Zealand's own move toward digital Road User Charging carries the same architectural exposure. If we don't start asking these questions now at the design stage, we'll be answering them later at the incident-response stage — and that's a far more expensive place to learn.

What struck me in both cities was how ready our audience was for that conversation. Fleet managers, insurers, government and utility operators, emergency services — sharp, engaged questions, and a genuine appetite to move from "interesting problem" to "what do we actually do about it." That's the sign of an industry maturing in real time to the risk management challenges inherent in the transition from vehicles as machines to cyber-connected platforms with the potential to be shut down by malicious actors using frontier AI.

None of that happens without the people doing the unglamorous work of making two events land well in two different cities in three days. So a genuine thank you to Caroline Perry, NZ Director of Brake, the road safety charity, who worked seamlessly alongside AfMA to pull both seminars together. Anyone who's run an event knows that "seamless" is the hardest word to earn — it means a hundred small things went right that the audience never had to think about. Caroline and the team delivered exactly that, twice, back to back. Thank you.

And many thanks to the other presenters who gave up their time to share their challenges and insights into operating fleets and managing the myriad issues. The reoccurring theme being that of technology and in-vehicle systems as we move towards safer driving and autonomous solutions.

If you were in the room in either city, I'd genuinely like to hear what landed and what didn't — the best version of this conversation is the one industry has together, not one delivered from the front of the room.

*Peter Adams is Principal of OnRequest Auto IntelliDents, Sheffield Fox International, and Chair of AfMA NZ.*