Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, SecurityScorecard join to boost cyber resilience, secure critical infrastructure

January 12, 2024

SecurityScorecard announced on Thursday a partnership with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (the Cyber Centre). The company is delivering security ratings with continuous real-time monitoring to manage cyber risk across Canada’s critical infrastructure.

The Cyber Centre now has access to SecurityScorecard’s security ratings platform to provide actionable insights on evolving cybersecurity threats facing critical infrastructure. Under this partnership, SecurityScorecard will enable the Cyber Centre to educate critical infrastructure owner-operators on the risks facing their organizations, assisting them to remediate and measure cybersecurity risk in real time.

“Canada is a leading cybersecurity innovator creating a more collaborative and resilient digital ecosystem. SecurityScorecard is honored to partner with the Cyber Centre in safeguarding the critical infrastructure Canadian citizens rely on every day,” Sachin Bansal, chief business officer at SecurityScorecard, said in a company statement. “This partnership serves as a model for other governments to collaborate with the private sector to achieve real-time visibility into the cyber threats facing critical infrastructure. I applaud the Cyber Centre for being nimble and taking bold action to establish a new standard in trust and transparency.”

Cyber incidents impacting critical infrastructure, once comparatively rare, have become much more common in recent years. According to the Cyber Centre’s National Cyber Threat Assessment 2023-2024 report, critical infrastructure is increasingly at risk.

“Cybercriminals exploit critical infrastructure because downtime can be harmful to their industrial processes and the customers they serve. State-sponsored actors target critical infrastructure to collect information through espionage, to pre-position in case of future hostilities, and as a form of power projection and intimidation.”

By using SecurityScorecard, the Cyber Centre has a simple way to instantly measure and quantify the cyber risk of any critical infrastructure entity with an ‘A’ through ‘F letter-grade rating system using continuously monitored threat intelligence data. This information is for the use of critical infrastructure operators and the Cyber Centre and will not be made public.

“We have comprehensive data on government systems, but our visibility into emerging threats to critical infrastructure has been limited historically – and that’s precisely where the greatest risks lie,” Sami Khoury, head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, said.

Citing the World Economic Forum, Khoury pointed out that critical infrastructure remains the prime target for threat actors.

“Our partnership with SecurityScorecard provides us with authoritative and trusted data on critical infrastructure and insight to manage such risk at scale,” Khoury added. “We are committed to increasing the confidence of Canadians in the critical systems they rely on daily, offering support to critical infrastructure networks and other systems of importance to Canada. This will help the Cyber Centre ensure we can provide tailored support to critical infrastructure owner-operators vital to the security of the Canadian economy.”