Canada’s New Cybersecurity Advisory:
What It Means for Businesses Worldwide?

The Canadian federal government has rolled out a bill that will make reporting cyber breaches/attacks mandatory for businesses operating in the critical infrastructure sector.

The Canadian Center for Cyber Security also known as (the Cyber Centre) identifies energy, transportation, telecommunications and finance sectors as being vital to public safety and national security. The country’s federal government has urged businesses operating in the critical infrastructure companies to ramp up their security posture and defenses in view of the growing threat landscape and attack vectors.

The Cyber Centre taking cognizant of the foreign cyber threat vectors and elements including Russian-backed actors issued an advisory for all the critical infrastructure companies in the country urging them to bolster their security posture.

 

“The advisory aims to help both the private as well as public sectors to protect themselves against the growing menace of cyber attacks,” said Marco Mendicino, Canadian Public Safety Minister.

Unfortunately, most hacking incidents go under-reported, since businesses under the current laws are not required to disclose attacks/breaches when they take place, explained Marco Mendicino.

What does it mean for businesses around the world?

Cybercriminals are getting highly creative, motivated and increasingly nimble. Any attack on a critical infrastructure system could unleash dire consequences. Learning from these incidents can help to detect and prevent these attacks in a much better manner. Here’s what this means for businesses around the world.

• Keep testing: Unpatched vulnerabilities account for more than 60% of the total breaches. Attackers are always on the lookout for flaws or misconfigurations that offer access to critical systems. Identify potential security threats across your organization’s IT infrastructure with powerful vulnerability management and pen testing methodology.

• Train your people:Educate your employees to be vigilant and raise awareness about potential cyber threats.

• Be vigilant: Be prepared to quarantine critical infrastructure components if you deem them hostile or vulnerable to attacks.

• Monitor your networks: Increase organizational cyber vigilance. Ensure that your IT/security crew is focused on identifying and assessing unusual or unexpected network behavior. Enable robust identity and access management practices and tools.

• Improve your security posture: Patch your mission-critical systems with a prime focus on fixing vulnerabilities. Deploy endpoint security, implement multifactor authentication, etc. where appropriate.

• Back up your data: Ensure that you have a robust backup and data recovery plan.

• Cyber incident response: Ensure that you have a cyber incident response strategy in place to hunt, stop and/or quarantine threats in their tracks.

• Report incidents immediately: Quick incident reporting and taking proper response steps can help curb the damage.

• Seek expert help: Futurism specializes in strengthening the security posture of enterprises by providing the right layers of security resources and protection across the entire threat landscape from a range of threats.

These breaches serve as a stark reminder to take preventive cybersecurity measures. The risks associated with most cyber attacks are becoming increasingly challenging to tackle, as the gravity and number of breaches continue to increase across the fast-evolving threat landscape.

Is your business prepared to handle a breach? How secure is your organization’s security posture? Are you looking out for ways to fortify your security? Our security experts can help you leverage market-leading threat intelligence through our Managed Security Acceleration Services that utilize a Zero Trust security model to offer up-to-the-minute protection against advanced cyber threats including multi-prong attack tactics and new strands of Ransomware.

Set up a consultation with one of our security experts or request a FREE demo now!

Disclaimer: All the information, views and opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the authors and their respective web sources and in no way reflect the views, principles, or objectives of Futurism Technologies.