Tuesday, October 02, 2018

Canadian Centre for Cyber Security launched

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced the official launch of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) on October 1st.

The Centre, which I blogged about earlier here, was created by amalgamating Public Safety Canada's Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre (CCIRC) and Get Cyber Safe public awareness program, elements of the Shared Services Canada Security Operations Centre, and the entire IT Security branch of CSE. The CCCS will remain a component of CSE, but it will have its own head (former Deputy Chief IT Security Scott Jones), its own public identity, and, as of 2019, its own headquarters building in the National Capital Region.

The separate building will enable the Centre to interact more with industry and the public, Jones told the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on September 20th:
[W]e're making sure that we have a facility where people can come in and work. If you come and visit CSE now, we take all of your technology away because you're entering a top secret building. The cyber centre will not be that way. The physical facility for this will be a place where people can come and collaborate and, frankly, bring their stuff so we can see how it works and we can work together on things.
Jones anticipates that the RCMP's new National Cybercrime Coordination Unit, although not a part of the CCCS, will be co-located in the same building.

Not mentioned, although perhaps also a factor in the decision to house the Centre in a separate facility, is the possibility that CSE's new headquarters building, which was itself completed only in 2015, may have been running out of space as a result of anticipated staff increases in both the cybersecurity and the SIGINT sides of the agency.

[Update 13 November 2018: The new facility will be located at 1625 Vanier Parkway.]

You can read more about the Centre and its launch here and here.


News coverage:

Jim Bronskill, "New cybersecurity centre assesses threats to Canadian electoral system," Canadian Press, 1 October 2018.

Howard Solomon, "Canadian Centre for Cyber Security opens, to be focus for federal safety efforts," IT World Canada, 1 October 2018.


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