EY acquires Melbourne-headquartered cybersecurity partner J Group Consulting

EY Identity has acquired Melbourne-headquartered cybersecurity partner J Group Consulting.

J Group Consulting specialises in Privileged Access Management (PAM), and lists CyberArk, SailPoint, AWS and Hashicorp Vault on its LinkedIn profile.

It was established in 2022 by Joel Harris, who had previously done PAM work at Commonwealth Bank and NAB, among other roles, according to his LinkedIn profile.

J Group Consulting had “focused on attracting and cultivating highly experienced privileged access management practitioners offering strategy, implementation, optimisation and engineering services across Asia Pacific” according to EY.

Its team of 20, including Harris, will join EYI, based primarily in Melbourne and Sydney, serving clients across Oceania.  

Harris will also join the Ernst & Young Australia partnership.

The acquisition will help EYI “further scale transformation delivery and managed services in support of the fast-growing digital identity and cybersecurity market”, EY stated.

“Clients continue to increase investment in identity and privileged access management to protect critical IT and operational technology systems,” noted Richard Watson, EY Global & Asia-Pacific Cybersecurity Consulting Leader, “and the introduction of recent legislation around critical infrastructure in Australia is driving many implementations in the market.

“The business acquisition of J Group Consulting bolsters the strength of the EY cybersecurity practice with unique skills in a highly competitive market and puts EY identity and privileged access management capabilities at the front of the Oceania market.”