Critical infrastructure has become more vulnerable to attacks in the past 10 or 15 years because it is now connected to the internet to allow it to be operated remotely, which “opens up another dimension of cyber threats,” according to Benjamin Fung, Canada research chair in data mining for cybersecurity at McGill University.Article content
Mary-Liz Power, spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, said in an email that work on the new legislative framework, which would “introduce measures to enhance the cyber resilience of Canada’s critical infrastructure in the federally regulated private sector” is “ongoing.” But the critical infrastructure piece hasn’t been tackled adequately, according to the government itself. The briefing binder prepared for Blair when he became public safety minister in 2019 noted that the “cybersecurity concerns identified for remain unaddressed.”
Meanwhile, the Communications Security Establishment’s 2020 report flagged that state-sponsored actors “are very likely attempting to develop cyber capabilities to disrupt Canadian critical infrastructure, such as the supply of electricity, to further their goals.