ARCHIVED - Investing in Cyber Security

The Government of Canada is investing $155 million over five years to reinforce federal government cyber security capabilities and improve the detection of, and response to, continually evolving cyber threats for the benefit of all Canadians.

Enhanced security of government systems will better protect the private information of Canadians and Canadian businesses entrusted to the government, as well as the Government’s own sensitive information. 

Canadians trust government with their personal and corporate information, and also trust government to deliver services to them. We take this responsibility seriously. Enhanced security of government systems will better protect the private information of Canadians and Canadian businesses that are held there.

Since the release of Canada’s Cyber Security Strategy, the Government of Canada has been strengthening Canada’s capacity to mitigate, detect, and respond to cyber incidents:

• In 2011, we introduced the Government IT Shared Services initiative to transform the way government manages IT telecommunications, desktop computer services, data centres, IT security services and Internet access points.  By consolidating our information technology infrastructure under Shared Services Canada, we are making our information technology infrastructure more secure.
• We have improved how we manage cyber incident response coordination and have clarified the roles and mandates for the Communications Security Establishment Canada and the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre to improve Canada’s ability to identify, prevent, and mitigate cyber security incidents.

The funding announced today further secures government systems that deliver services to all Canadians and complements additional efforts under Canada’s Cyber Security Strategy to protect Canadians from cyber threats.

Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre (CCIRC)

As Canada’s computer security incident response team for non-government systems, CCIRC is Canada’s national coordination centre for the prevention and mitigation of, preparedness for, response to, and recovery from cyber incidents. 

CCIRC provides authoritative advice and support, and coordinates information sharing and incident response, in conjunction with its domestic and international partners to address high-level cyber security concerns.

A portion of the funding announced today is allocated to CCIRC to:

• Expand collaboration with internal and external partners to improve incident response across Canada, and enhance the ability of government and its partners to maintain awareness of the cyber environment; and
• Strengthen analytical capability to improve mitigation advice and incident response for partners.

Date modified:

2015-11-20