Cyber threats top of mind for defence minister heading into 2020 - iPolitics.ca

The cyber component of threats to Canada are at the top of the mind of the country’s defence minister as 2020 approaches.

“When it comes to any threats that I look at, I always look at it from a cyber perspective,” Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said in response to being asked what the biggest threat that Canada is facing is in a year-end interview with iPolitics.

The term “cyber” itself comes up nearly 90 times in the Liberal government’s 113-page defence policy published in 2017.

Strong, Secure, Engaged, as the policy is titled, is designed to be the guiding document for Canada’s military and security agencies well into the second quarter of this century.

The portion of the policy about Canada’s cyber presence specifically named online terrorist networks and foreign states’ intelligence operations as threats of concern to Canada.

In the national cyber security strategy that the Department of National Defence played a role in creating and that Public Safety Canada released in 2018, the theft of trade secrets, personal and financial information, and intellectual property are described as potential cyber crimes.

Sajjan said a mixture of domestic actors, foreign governments and non-government foreign actors pose potential cyber threats to Canada.

“It’s about governments that are not following the international rules based orders as much as they should. It’s about non-state actors, it’s about even organized crime, it’s about the individual,” Sajjan said.

In the 2018 budget, the federal government committed to its largest-ever investment in cyber security by pledging more than $100 millio ..

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