CCN News
The latest news and perspectives on cybersecurity, technology and digital trust in Canada. Reports and research stay in the Intelligence Library.
The boundaries between AI, cybersecurity, cloud and data roles are blurring. Skills convergence is reshaping Canada’s technology workforce, challenging employers to rethink hiring and workers to build capabilities across disciplines.
By Canadian Cybersecurity Network
Canada’s next AI challenge is not simply developing better technology, but ensuring businesses know how to use it effectively. The article argues for an “AI bilingual economy” where leaders and workers combine AI fluency with business and domain expertise to make better decisions, manage risk and turn AI investment into measurable value. Drawing on CCN experts, it highlights practical education, data governance, secure adoption, AI agent oversight, digital sovereignty and stronger accountability for Canada’s new National AI Council. Ultimately, Canada’s success should be measured not by how much AI it adopts, but by productivity, business value, Canadian capability and global competitiveness.
By Francois Guay
A CCN brief on the need for drone technology to be tested in Canada.
By Canadian Cybersecurity Network
Job scams are becoming a business trust issue as fraudsters impersonate employers and recruiters with increasingly convincing messages. Canadians reported C$49 million in employment fraud losses in 2024 and C$46.5 million in the first nine months of 2025.
By Canadian Cybersecurity Network
AI search is changing how people discover and assess businesses. In this Q&A, Anton Sopov explains how SEO connects with AI optimization and why being mentioned is only the beginning. The key signal: AI may shape a customer’s impression before they visit your website, making accurate information, credible evidence and professional reputation increasingly important.
By Francois Guay
Canadian leaders have more information than ever, yet the risks shaping their decisions are increasingly connected and harder to interpret. CCN Intelligence brings together evidence and perspectives from across sectors to identify emerging signals and turn them into practical guidance.
By Charlie Tsao
Canada’s AI challenge is shifting from building technical talent to creating people who can combine AI with business experience and domain expertise. This article explores how an AI bilingual workforce could simultaneously accelerate adoption, particularly among SMEs, and create the practical experience new graduates increasingly need.
By Francois Guay
This article examines how telematics is turning heavy equipment into connected digital assets across Canadian agriculture, mining, construction and forestry. It weighs the gains in maintenance, coordination and productivity against cybersecurity, connectivity, data ownership and interoperability risks, and outlines practical questions leaders should ask before adopting connected services.
By Francois Guay
Most TPRM programs fail at the handoffs between departments, not inside any single team's process. This article outlines what Legal, Procurement, IT, and other business unit allies each need from TPRM and what TPRM needs from them, and closes with one practical step, a shared vendor intake process, that organizations can implement to address this gap.
By Sara Lopes
Scotiabank, Sun Life, TELUS and Lightworks have created a shared approach to AI control infrastructure that allows participating institutions to pool engineering effort while retaining independent ownership. The model signals a broader shift in how regulated Canadian organizations may balance AI speed, security, governance and sovereignty.
By Anirudh Kotaru
Canada's cybersecurity hiring market is showing credible signs of recovery, with 663 postings recorded in Q2 2026, the strongest quarter across seven quarters of tracking. The more important signal is the composition of demand. Only 4.1 per cent of observed roles were entry level or junior, compared with 68.2 per cent at the mid level. If that imbalance persists, Canada risks creating a structural workforce bottleneck in which employers compete for experienced talent while creating too few opportunities for new professionals to gain the experience the market demands.
By Francois Guay
Canada's growing investment in domestic cloud and AI infrastructure will not create digital sovereignty unless Canadian organizations also control legal jurisdiction, encryption keys, data access and workload portability. The article argues that foreign owned cloud platforms can remain subject to foreign court orders even when data is stored in Canada. It calls for sovereign procurement standards, transparent AI training data, Canadian controlled infrastructure and statutory protection for strategically sensitive workloads.
By George Al-Koura
Information is becoming abundant, inexpensive and increasingly generated by artificial intelligence, but executive attention, organizational capacity and sound judgment remain scarce. The article argues that competitive advantage is shifting from access to information toward the ability to distinguish strategic priorities from strategic distractions. It positions organizational intelligence as an emerging leadership and governance capability built on evidence validation, disciplined decision making, clear outcomes and meaningful executive control.
By Francois Guay
Digital transformation is entering a new phase in which trust, rather than technology alone, will determine adoption. Canadians continue to embrace digital services, but they are becoming more selective about the organizations they trust with personal information. Leaders that reduce unnecessary data collection, improve transparency, and build stronger verification models may gain a significant competitive advantage.
By Francois Guay
Canada's defence readiness increasingly depends on its ability to build, coordinate, and deploy cyber capability at speed. Drawing on Daniel Blanc's military and cyber leadership experience, the article argues that investment alone will not create digital power without stronger collaboration, faster procurement, greater risk tolerance, and clearer pathways for Canadian innovation.
By Francois Guay
RADIUS remains a foundational layer of global connectivity, determining whether devices can join a network before application level identity controls take effect. Alan DeKok and Inkbridge Networks demonstrate why mature, widely embedded infrastructure still demands commercial support, operational discipline and human oversight. As organizations invest in artificial intelligence, cloud services and advanced identity systems, leaders cannot afford to overlook the protocols and control points on which those technologies depend.
By Francois Guay
Creators, consultants and solo operators increasingly depend on digital platforms for revenue, customer relationships and brand value. Account takeover, contractor access and permanent content loss can therefore become business continuity events. The article recommends stronger authentication, role based permissions, isolated backups, asset ownership records and incident response planning. Digital trust is becoming evidence of operational maturity rather than an informal promise to customers, sponsors and partners.
By Jahvin Bridge
This perspective argues that Canada's innovation challenge is no longer creating world class intellectual property but retaining and protecting it. Legal IP protections alone are insufficient against modern cyber threats, AI enabled attacks, and state sponsored industrial espionage. Organizations must integrate cybersecurity, intellectual property strategy, governance, and executive leadership into a layered defence that protects competitive advantage and strengthens Canada's long term economic resilience.
By Michael Huynh & Francois Guay
The article argues that cybersecurity is evolving from a defensive function into the operational foundation of trust within Canada's platform based financial ecosystem. As financial institutions become increasingly interconnected through APIs, fintech partnerships, and real time payments, trust must be continuously demonstrated rather than assumed. AI driven fraud detection, identity verification, and ecosystem wide collaboration are presented as strategic capabilities that enable trusted participation in the digital economy. Organizations that cannot demonstrate ecosystem level trust risk losing competitiveness and market access.
By Francois Guay
The article examines the growing credibility gap in cybersecurity awareness programs, arguing that vendor defined success metrics often measure activity rather than measurable risk reduction. Drawing on the perspective of phishing specialist Cary Johnson, it advocates for evidence based baselining, continuous measurement, targeted interventions, and communication focused on business outcomes. The article positions objective measurement as essential for improving human risk management as phishing techniques continue to evolve.
By Francois Guay
Canada's cybersecurity weakness is not primarily a shortage of talent or technology. Steve Waterhouse argues that fragmented authority, political constraints, risk avoidance, weak intelligence sharing, aging infrastructure, and limited national coordination prevent the country from acting decisively. Drawing on experience in the military, government, and private sector, he calls for stronger preparation, shared intelligence, clearer accountability, and practical foundations before ambitious national initiatives are pursued.
By Francois Guay
Canada's cybersecurity talent challenge is not simply a shortage of new graduates. It is a widening divide between people who continuously develop practical skills and those relying primarily on credentials. Anthony Green argues that AI is accelerating this separation while employers compound the problem by seeking experienced talent without investing in junior development. Projects, mentorship and community participation are becoming essential bridges from education to employment.
By Francois Guay
Cybersecurity teams can identify far more vulnerabilities than organizations can realistically fix. As AI accelerates discovery and potentially exploitation, the critical capability becomes prioritization: determining which exposures are exploitable, actively targeted and connected to systems or identities that matter most to the business. The article argues that vulnerability management is increasingly a capital allocation and executive decision problem, not simply a technical remediation exercise.
By Francois Guay
In this article, Charlie Tsao, writes about the Canadian Cybersecurity Network's CCN's Insight report on Cybersecurity as the new infrastructure, shaping who can compete on the local, national and global stage.
By Charlie Tsao
In this article, Charlie Tsao, writes about the Canadian Cybersecurity Network's national report on Cybersecurity, AI and Digital Trust and how AI is reshaping the economy, the risks and the opportunities.
By Charlie Tsao
Francois Guay interviews Amisha Parikh from Mastercard in this Faces of Cyber article. Amisha talks about how cybersecurity has become core business infrastructure, with digital trust now determining market access, growth, and competitiveness across Canada’s economy.
By Francois Guay
Jayson Myers argues that Canada's manufacturing challenge is not a shortage of ideas but a failure to adopt and scale innovation. Advanced manufacturing requires organizations to align people, processes and technology around measurable business outcomes. Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence governance and supply chain trust are becoming prerequisites for productivity and market access. Through collaborative projects, NGen aims to connect manufacturers, technology firms, researchers and governments so innovations reach production faster and with less risk.
By Francois Guay
This report leveraging Canadian Cybersecurity Network jobs data from the Canadian Cybersecurity Jobs platform was completed by Steve McWilliams. It features a 12-Month Market Analysis from March 2025 – February 2026
By Steve McMichael
After three decades with the FBI, Scott Augenbaum reached a conclusion that challenges conventional cybersecurity thinking: many cyber incidents are preventable, yet organizations continue to focus heavily on technology while underinvesting in human behaviour. His experience points to social engineering, weak authentication habits, denial of personal risk and compliance driven awareness programs as persistent vulnerabilities. Generative AI increases the speed, scale and credibility of attacks, but does not fundamentally change the problem. For leaders, resilience increasingly depends on creating a culture where verification, secure authentication and individual responsibility become everyday behaviours.
By Francois Guay
Charlie Tsao talks about the highlights and the release of the Canadian Cybersecurity Network and their flagship annual report on the 2026 State of Cybersecurity in Canada.
By Charlie Tsao
Privacy compliance and technical controls do not automatically protect people. Complex notices, manipulative consent, inaccessible controls and unequal power can leave individuals exposed even when formal requirements are met. Human centred data protection shifts attention from checking requirements to preventing harm. It treats usability, dignity, autonomy, fairness and meaningful agency as essential design and governance requirements while recognizing privacy as an evolving relationship among people, technology and institutions.
By Ishmael Roberto Pennino
Francois Guay CEO and Founder of CCN discusses how community is now the key to helping address cybersecurity and digital trust in this CyberVoices blog.
By Francois Guay
Sophia Kudlyk describes cyber insurance as a rapidly evolving but volatile market shaped by ransomware, social engineering and fluctuating insurer capacity. Sustainable coverage requires more than competitive pricing. Carriers, brokers and clients need transparent partnerships grounded in data, mature underwriting and shared objectives. Brokers increasingly serve as translators between technical threats and executive decisions, while effective incident response depends on coordinated expertise, clear communication and empathy for organizations under pressure.
By Francois Guay
Tom Levasseur argues that Canada can strengthen its cybersecurity workforce by giving students practical experience before they enter the labour market. CyberSci combines realistic competitions, employer interviews and community mentorship to move participants from learning into employment. Early exposure through CyberTitan and student clubs expands the pipeline, while new industrial security challenges prepare students for critical infrastructure risks. The model depends on sustained support from educators, government, industry sponsors and volunteers.
By Francois Guay
Cybersecurity awareness should move beyond blaming employees and treating annual training as proof of resilience. Human behaviour is shaped by workload, fatigue, culture, system design and social pressure. Organizations can improve outcomes by designing simpler controls, creating psychological safety, using relevant experiential learning and treating errors as signals of system misalignment. Human centric security reframes people as active sources of detection, judgement and resilience rather than unavoidable weaknesses.
By Ishmael Roberto Pennino
Dr. Benoit Desjardins argues that healthcare cybersecurity must be treated as patient safety. Ransomware and insecure medical systems can delay diagnoses, cancel procedures and threaten lives. His work exposes vulnerabilities in medical imaging and supports more secure provincial infrastructure. He also calls for collaborative responses that help hospitals recover rather than treating victims as offenders, alongside new interdisciplinary career paths for clinicians who understand medicine, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
By Francois Guay
Francois Guay of the Canadian Cybersecurity Network interviews Enza Alexander, EVP of ISA Cybersecurity who tells us that the future of cybersecurity is not just technical, it is human.
By Francois Guay
James Cairns identifies workforce capacity as one of Canada's most pressing cybersecurity constraints. Organizations need practical entry points where students and graduates can gain experience while supporting frontline security work. His model combines broad technical foundations, Tier 1 roles, experiential learning, community participation and leadership commitment. Bow Valley College's security and artificial intelligence governance work demonstrates how institutions can develop talent while strengthening operational trust.
By Charlie Tsao
Canada's critical infrastructure increasingly depends on connected operational technology, yet many operators face outdated systems, limited visibility, constrained resources and fragmented coordination. As information technology and operational technology converge, cyber incidents can create physical disruption, threaten public safety and interrupt essential services. The article calls for asset visibility, modernization, stronger coordination, intelligence sharing and workforce development.
By Charlie Tsao
Jennifer Quaid argues that cybersecurity resilience depends on people, processes and trusted collaboration as much as technical intelligence. Through the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, organizations across sectors share active threats, effective controls and recovery lessons. This exchange reduces duplicated effort and improves decisions during incidents. Quaid also calls for cybersecurity to be treated as an enterprise risk function, with CISOs translating technical exposure into business priorities and organizations measuring resilience through recovery capability.
By Francois Guay
Mobia Technology Innovations has grown from an Atlantic Canadian component supplier into a national technology company spanning telecommunications, enterprise IT, cybersecurity and digital health. Its evolution illustrates how disciplined reinvestment, diversification and an enabling culture can help privately held companies survive regulatory shocks, changing customer demand and industry disruption without relying on venture capital.
By Francois Guay
In this article Ali Dehghantanha explores what Canada must do after missing the AI bubble and focusing on guarding the world's AI.
By Ali Dehghantanha
Canadian small and medium businesses face significant exposure to ransomware, phishing and insider threats while often operating with limited security resources. These attacks can interrupt operations, steal funds, expose sensitive information and create regulatory consequences. Practical measures such as secure backups, multifactor authentication, endpoint protection, employee training, least privilege, access monitoring and tested incident response can materially reduce risk.
By Luigi Tiano
Francois Guay, Founder of CCN discusses the need to work together across all of Canada on building our cybersecurity national strategy regardless of province, political stripe, etc, just like our founders did decades ago.
By Francois Guay
Quantum computing may eventually weaken the public key cryptography that protects digital transactions, government systems and critical infrastructure. Ottawa based Crypto4a is addressing this risk through crypto agile hardware that can adopt new algorithms without replacing entire systems. Its work highlights a broader challenge for leaders: quantum readiness requires early planning, adaptable infrastructure, skilled talent and coordinated procurement long before a cryptographically relevant quantum computer appears.
By Francois Guay
