Canada’s largest scientific research and development agency suffers a cyber attack

Earlier this year, the Communications Security Authority (CSE), Canada’s cybersecurity agency, warned businesses about the risk of being attacked by hackers.

Christine Aquino, NRC’s general manager for communications, said the “cyber incident” was first detected on March 18 and “mitigation actions were taken immediately”. The term “cyber incident” is frequently used by Canadian cybersecurity officials to describe a government computer being hacked.

Aquino declined to provide further details about the attack, saying only that the NRC was working with the CSE’s Cybersecurity Center to investigate what happened.

As a scientific organization, the NRC remains constantly alert to the threat of cyberattacks, and the control measures have enabled the NRC to respond quickly to the March 18 incident.

In 2014, the NRC was also the target of foreign hackers. In February, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of the Canadian Parliament warned of significant gaps in the Canadian government’s cybersecurity fence. Accordingly, a large number of organizations, especially national corporations, did not comply with the policies of the Treasury Board, nor did they apply cybersecurity regulations. As a result, unprotected organizations risk becoming the weak link in government cyber defenses.