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Cybersecurity Sami Khoury on Canada’s Next Cybersecurity Challenges After more than three decades at the Communications Security Establishment, including leading the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security from 2021 to 2024, Khoury shares his perspective on quantum threats, frontier AI, and Canada’s cyber resilience. Quantum computers are not yet capable of breaking today’s encryption at scale. Why does quantum computing already represent a cybersecurity risk for Canadian organizations? Quantum computers capable of breaking today’s public-key encryption do not exist yet, but the risk to sensitive data is already real. Malicious actors can collect encrypted information today with the intention of decrypting it later, once sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available. This is what is known as “harvest now, decrypt later.” If an organization holds information that needs to remain confidential for 5, 10, or 20 years, the clock is already ticking. That is why organizations need to start preparing for the quantum threat and planning their transition over the next several years. This is
not simply a theoretical or scientific challenge. Governments and financial regulators have already begun setting timelines for migration. The Government of Canada’s own roadmap targets the end of 2031 for migrating high-priority federal systems and the end of 2035 for everything else. Those dates are set for federal departments rather than for businesses, but they are a fair indication of the pace this transition will demand. The risk also goes beyond data confidentiality. Quantum computing could affect the systems of trust that underpin our digital lives. If a future quantum computer can compromise digital signatures, for example, a malicious actor could potentially make an update or application appear to come from a trusted provider. So the issue is not only protecting encrypted data, but also preserving digital trust.
Evan Solomon on Building a Secure Digital Future for Canada The minister discusses how Canada can strengthen cybersecurity, adopt AI safely, and build the domestic capacity needed to protect its digital economy. Cybersecurity is increasingly connected to Canada’s economic security and resilience. How is the Government of Canada approaching cybersecurity as part of the country’s broader economic and national security strategy? Cybersecurity is foundational to Canada’s economic resilience, national security and sovereignty. Our businesses, supply chains, financial systems, communications networks and public services all depend on secure digital infrastructure. A serious cyber incident can disrupt operations, undermine confidence and impose real costs on workers, consumers, and communities. AI is making this challenge more urgent as increasingly capable systems create both new defensive tools and new risks. That is why
cybersecurity cannot be treated as a narrow technical expense. It is an investment in growth, competitiveness, and public trust. The Government of Canada is strengthening resilience across the economy, improving collaboration and information sharing, supporting Canadian expertise, and ensuring security is built into emerging technologies from the beginning. We are also investing in the institutions and research needed to identify emerging AI risks early and evaluate advanced systems independently. In a more uncertain world, the countries that can protect their data, infrastructure and institutions will be best positioned to attract investment, scale companies and create lasting prosperity. Canada intends to be one of them.
To read the full interviews, visit innovatingcanada.ca.
Why Organizations Need to Understand and Insure Against Cyber Risks With cyber threats becoming increasingly sophisticated and persistent, today’s business leaders need to understand, manage, quantify, and insure against the evolving risks.
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rganizations of all shapes and sizes around the world are navigating increasingly complex cyber risks. Cyberattacks and data breaches were ranked as the number one risk for the third consecutive time in Aon’s 2025 Global Risk Management Survey, which gathered insights from nearly 3,000 leaders in over 60 countries. “The cyber risk landscape is evolving very quickly now with the introduction of AI, deepfakes, and other technological advancements,” says Ady Sharma, Senior Vice-President and Cyber Solutions Co-Leader at Aon Canada, a leading global professional services firm focusing on risk and insurance. “We’re seeing threat actors becoming more sophisticated and more persistent.” Cyberattacks can severely disrupt operations, lead to theft of highly sensitive information and cause significant fi nancial and reputational damage to a business. Given this environment, Sharma says it’s important for organizations to assess their cyber risk, quantify their cyber exposure, and purchase cyber insurance protection thereafter.
Assessing and quantifying your cyber exposure Assessing an organization’s cyber risk involves understanding what information it holds, how sensitive that information is, and what protections surround it. “Several organizations continue to buy insurance based on a hunch or what their peers are buying. While benchmarking against your peers is a good start, it can never give you the most accurate picture,” says Sharma. Risk quantification models help organizations assess the probability and potential financial consequences of different cyber
incidents. The analysis can help business leaders make better decisions about how much to invest in cybersecurity, the type and amount of insurance coverage to purchase, and how to manage cyber risk more broadly. “This is how we at Aon help our clients make risk transfer decisions: through a customized cyber assessment followed by risk quantification modeling to ensure that we’re equipping organizations to be adequately insured,” says Sharma.
Effective, affordable, and accessible cyber insurance Security controls and cyber insurance should go hand in hand as part of a broader risk management strategy, with Sharma stressing that organizations shouldn’t rely exclusively on one or the other. “Adequate risk management has to be a healthy balance of risk control and risk transfer,” he says. Cyber insurance coverage is specifically designed to not only provide financial protection from expenses that may be incurred as a result of an incident, but also the infrastructure needed to effectively respond and recover. Sharma explains how critical that support is given the rising complexity of incidents, and this includes access to a range of experts and service providers which can be extremely expensive in the absence of insurance. Fortunately, cyber insurance in Canada has become more affordable and accessible in recent years. “The cyber insurance market is ultra-competitive, which has brought prices down despite a consistently heightening risk environment,” says Sharma. Underwriting has also become more streamlined, and smaller businesses may be able to obtain coverage while providing only minimal information.
Written by Tania Amardeil
General Disclaimer This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and does not accept any liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document. Terms of Use The contents herein may not be reproduced, reused, reprinted, or redistributed without the expressed written consent of Aon, unless otherwise authorized by Aon. To use information contained herein, please write to our team.
Ady Sharma Senior VicePresident & Cyber Solutions Co-Leader, Aon Canada
To learn more about Aon’s cyber risk and insurance capabilities, visit aon.com/en/capabilities/cyber-resilience or email cyber.deal.desk@aon.ca with any inquiries. This article was sponsored by Aon Canada.
Publisher: William Stone Business Development Manager: Luca Bidini Country Manager: Samantha Taylor Content & Client Success Manager: Nicole Kansakar Creative Director: Kylie Armishaw Digital Traffic Manager: Vansh Chandwaney All images are from Getty Images unless otherwise credited. This section was created by Mediaplanet and did not involve The National Post or its editorial departments. Send all inquiries to ca.editorial@mediaplanet.com
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Canada’s Cyber Defenders Just Got a New Set of Eyes A new collaboration between a leading cyber threat-sharing organization and a cross-sector coalition fighting scams and fraud is strengthening Canada’s defences.
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Written by Jennifer Quaid Executive Director, Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange
ybersecurity leaders understand a critical truth: an organization can only defend against the threats it can see. That’s why the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange (CCTX) has welcomed the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition (CASC) into its network of trusted defenders. For over a decade, CCTX has given Canadian organizations a place to exchange threat intelligence they cannot safely share anywhere else. In this way, one member’s incident becomes every member’s early warning. Adding CASC’s anti-fraud network only enhances the impact of CCTX’s cyber mission. Cybersecurity protects the systems Canadians rely on. Antiscam initiatives protect the people who use those systems. It’s a natural fit.
Collaboration is critical in safeguarding organizations and individuals’ information.
instance, may be the opening move in an investment fraud. Cyberattacks and scams are increasingly built from the same technical foundations. Our defences must be, too.
Responding to threats faster That imperative has become even more urgent in the age of AI, which has dramatically accelerated malicious activity. Automation enables fraud operations to generate phishing messages, cloned voices, and fake websites at unprecedented speed and scale. That compression changes the calculus for information-sharing. An indicator that sits unshared for even a few days can become a window through which an AI-driven operation scales an attack across sectors. Under the new arrangement, CASC brings to CCTX new intelligence, new operational partners, and a more complete view of the criminal ecosystem. In return, CASC gains the infrastructure, technical rigour, and trusted sharing discipline that CCTX has spent years building, along with direct access to a community of cybersecurity practitioners who often see these threats first.
Connecting cyber and fraud intelligence
Taking a broader view “Cybercrime and fraud are now part of the same threat ecosystem, and Canada’s response must reflect that reality,” says Abhay Raman, Senior Vice-President and Chief Security Officer at Sun Life Financial and Chair of the CCTX Board of Directors. “Bringing CASC into CCTX gives our members a broader view of the threat, new operational partners, and greater opportunities to turn shared intelligence into collective action.” Over the past several years, the challenges posed by cybercrime and fraud have converged. Phishing, credential theft, account takeover, malicious domains, and brand impersonation form the infrastructure of the modern scam. A compromised email account, for
“Collaboration is critical in safeguarding organizations and individuals’ information,” says Iain Kennedy, Chief Information and Cyber Security Officer at Rogers Communications. “Rogers is a member of both the CCTX and CASC, and bringing them together will help us collectively build stronger defences, support more coordinated action, and strengthen Canada’s digital resilience.” Neither organization was built to do what the other does. Together, however, they’re positioned to see more of the same threat. Fraud intelligence adds real-world context to cyber indicators that might otherwise look like noise. Cyber threat intelligence helps anti-scam investigators identify malicious campaigns before they fully unfold. Bringing these intelligence streams together allows members to move beyond isolated incidents and identify connected criminal activity across sectors.
Bringing CASC into CCTX gives our members a broader view of the threat, new operational partners, and greater opportunities to turn shared intelligence into collective action.
To learn more about CCTX and the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition’s work to strengthen Canada’s cyber resilience, visit cctx.ca.
This article was sponsored by the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange and the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition.
“Scams do not begin and end within one sector,” says Anthony Ostler, President and CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association and Chair of the CASC Steering Committee. “They move across digital platforms, telecommunications networks, and financial systems, exploiting the gaps between them. CASC strengthens the cross-sector collaboration needed to close those gaps, disrupt criminal activity, and better protect Canadians.”
Cybercrime and fraud are now part of the same threat ecosystem, and Canada’s response must reflect that reality.
Closing the gaps between sectors Of course, no single defender can stop a swath of criminal networks. But this partnership begins to correct a fundamental mismatch. Cybercriminals and fraudsters already move seamlessly across the lines that separate cybersecurity from fraud prevention, banks from telecoms, and the private sector from law enforcement. They’ve never respected those boundaries. Too often, our defences have. That mismatch has a cost, and Canadians pay the price every day through stolen credentials, drained accounts, and scams that could have been stopped if the right people had been looking at the same picture. The integration of CASC into CCTX will demonstrate that Canada is strongest when its cyber and antifraud communities work together for the benefit of Canadians and Canadian organizations. A shared view of the threat landscape, combined with coordinated action across sectors, will help us stay ahead of adversaries, strengthen national resilience, and better protect Canadians, businesses, and institutions from evolving cyber and fraud threats.
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Strengthening Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience in the Age of AI With AI enabling increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and digital sovereignty concerns growing, Canadian organizations need to strengthen their cybersecurity and digital resilience.
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Nathan Jenniges Senior VicePresident & General Manager, BlackBerry Secure Communications
I is cha nging t he cybersecurity threat landscape for organizations in Canada and globally, lowering the cost and skill barriers to mounting attacks while increasing their speed and sophistication. Deepfakes, impersonation, and voice cloning are making it more and more challenging to verify who or what can be trusted in digital communications. Recent research from BlackBerry found that half of security leaders rank impersonation or deepfakes among their top three threats. “AI has really changed the economics of making an attack, the cost and the skills that an adversary needs,” says Nathan Jenniges, Senior Vice-President and General Manager at BlackBerry Secure Communications. He explains that attacks once associated with sophisticated actors can now come from any individual around the world, with AI lowering the barriers to convincing phishing, voice cloning, and deepfakes.
AI changes the economics of making an attack, the cost and the skills that an adversary needs.
collect and concentrate, he stresses the importance of maintaining Canadian control of sensitive data and communications.
Empowering Canada’s digital sovereignty Concerns about sensitive government, employee, or citizen information flowing through foreign AI systems or infrastructure have led to increased focus on Canadian digital sovereignty. Jenniges explains that there’s an important difference between simply keeping data in Canada and ensuring it remains under full Canadian control. Data residency describes the physical location where data is stored, but doesn’t necessarily mean that the broader system is Canadian-controlled. “There was a whole wave with data residency and that’s now shifting to data sovereignty, which means not only is the data resident, but all of the controls to unlock and use that data are also in the country,” says Jenniges. BlackBerry has a long history as a leader in secure communications in Canada and around the world. In partnership with Shared Services Canada, BlackBerry currently secures over 57,000 managed devices across federal organizations and is expanding its sovereign secure voice capabilities. Its suite of solutions includes BlackBerry UEM, which provides secure device management, and BlackBerry SecuSUITE, which provides secure voice, messaging, file sharing, and identity assurance.
Rethinking digital trust and control
Identity, trust, and secure communications
Knowing who or what to trust in digital communications is especially challenging because AI agents are increasingly acting on people’s behalf. They may use a human user’s identity and credentials to accomplish their tasks. “If that AI starts doing things that you don’t want it to do, you need to be able to shut it down without shutting down that person’s digital identity,” says Jenniges. That means giving the AI a distinct identity of its own, which allows organizations to distinguish and control it separately. Jenniges also points to the broader control and security issue of digital sovereignty. Given the enormous amounts of information that AI can
Jenniges explains that in typical systems, encryption may only protect a message’s content, while exposing other information related to the communication, such as who communicated and when. AI can now analyze huge volumes of this type of information and find patterns and relationships, potentially exposing vulnerabilities. And even if a message is encrypted, it doesn’t confirm that who you think you’re communicating with is who they say they are. SecuSUITE encrypts all aspects of a communication, including all of the metadata surrounding it, keeping the communication more secure. SecuSUITE has been independ-
ently certified by leading organizations including Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security, and NATO. “They’ve independently looked at and tried to find that type of identity leakage and information leakage and have certified that our product does exactly what it says it does, that all communication is fully encrypted. That matters significantly,” says Jenniges.
If AI starts doing things that you don’t want it to do, you need to be able to shut it down without shutting down that person’s digital identity.
Building cyber resilience BlackBerry’s research found that while 93 per cent of leaders believe they’re prepared for a major crisis, 51 per cent lack a unified communications platform for those situations. “What if the very nature of the communications that you rely on is compromised?” says Jenniges. BlackBerry AtHoc addresses that challenge, providing a separate, secure communication system for use during critical events, helping mission-critical organizations to continue coordinating and making decisions when normal systems are compromised or unavailable. It also supports having response playbooks in place so team members are prepared to act.
Read the The State of Secure Communications 2026 Survey here:
Written by Tania Amardeil
Learn more about how BlackBerry Secure Communications helps government, critical infrastructure, and enterprise organizations protect sensitive communications, strengthen digital sovereignty, and build resilience against evolving cyber threats at blackberry.com/secure-communications. This article was sponsored by BlackBerry.