CSE discovers more than 2000 cyber security incidents last year

There were nearly half a dozen cyber security incidents targeting federal institutions each day in the last fiscal year, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) revealed Wednesday in its annual report. The data was taken from information from the agency’s Canadian Centre for Cyber Security division. The fiscal year ran from Apr. 1, 2021 to Mar. 31, 2022 “This fiscal year, the Cyber Centre opened 2,023 cyber security incident cases,” the report stated. “That’s an average of 5.5 per day. Of those cases, 1,154 were federal institutions, and 869 were critical infrastructure.” The incidents included reconnaissance activity by sophisticated threat actors; phishing incidents; unauthorized access to corporate IT environments; imminent ransomware attacks and zero-day exploits, which is the exploitation of critical vulnerabilities in unpatched software. Not all the attempts were successful but were still registered for the CSE’s study. Unlike last year’s report, which highlighted the attempted attacks on the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), this year’s study did not specify which government entities were targeted. The health sector was an ongoing concern, CSE said. The CSE worked with Elections Canada to ensure that last September’s federal election was free from outside interference. It also reached out to political parties to determine what their cyber security issues were and to provide advice and guidance to the parties. Canada’s energy sector was also studied as a potential target. The CSE worked with industry associations to guarantee safety online. Of particular concern is the electricity market. "(The) likelihood of a cyber attack impacting the Canadian electricity sector is higher than it otherwise might be because of the connections between US and Canadian grids," the report quotes the Cyber Centre as saying. Last fall, the Centre and the B.C. Chambers of Commerce conducted a survey of small- and medium-sized businesses. Sixty-one per cent of respondents reported a cyber incident yet only 26 per cent of those attacked reported the incidents. Most business owners, 85 per cent, were unaware the federal government offers support to small- and medium-sized organizations. A further 52 per cent did not know who to report incidents to. To combat this, the CSE launched a new portal on its website in May 2021 that allows Canadians to report cyber incidents. It has also partnered with the Canadian Internet Registry Authority to create Canadian Shield, a free service that protects privacy on home networks and personal devices. “As of March 31, 2022, more than 177,000 users have signed up for Canadian Shield’s threat-blocking services, which recorded more than 88 million blocks this year,” the CSE noted. The federal agency has a large selection of written material to help users protect their privacy when online. The CSE should have more legislative muscle behind it when it issues next year’s annual report. Just before Parliament recessed for the summer, the government introduced a two-pronged cyber security bill. The Act Respecting Cyber Security (ARCS), otherwise known as Bill C-26, will have two components. One is devoted solely to telecommunications; the other concentrates on telecom, transport, energy and finance. Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino, who is shepherding the bill through the Commons alongside Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, maintains the act will protect infrastructure. New Democrat public security critic Alistair MacGregor worries that incidents will still go unreported. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

CSE discovers more than 2000 cyber security incidents last year

News | 06/29/2022 5:01 pm EDT

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