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Keynote – Daniel Couillard
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OT, IoT & Critical InfrastructureCritical InfrastructureThreats & Threat IntelligenceNation-State & GeopoliticsRansomwarePeople, Culture & Careers
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About this session
Daniel Couillard, Director General of Cyber Partnership at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, gives a keynote on why cybersecurity is a team sport and how the Centre works to make Canada more cyber resilient. He explains the Centre's mandate as Canada's operational cybersecurity authority, its access to classified and Five Eyes intelligence, and its free public threat publications. He argues 82 percent of breaches trace back to human error, which is why a cybersecurity culture matters as much as technology. He surveys the threat landscape: ransomware and double or triple extortion, the financial toll on companies such as Sobeys and Indigo, the Colonial Pipeline shutdown, degraded patient care at hospitals hit by ransomware, and increasingly aggressive state actors, chiefly Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, including the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange compromises. He details Centre initiatives: billions of blocked malicious activities a year, a municipal pilot, a free DNS protection service with CIRA, incident response such as the Newfoundland and Labrador health system attack, and information sharing with CISA and the FBI. He closes urging leaders to assess their exposure.
Key takeaways
- Treat cybersecurity as a team sport: leaders outside the security function still own part of the culture and the risk, not just the security team.
- Assume human error, not software vulnerabilities, is the leading cause of breaches (82 percent cited); prioritise awareness alongside technical controls.
- Plan for double and triple extortion, not just encryption: attackers now also exfiltrate data and threaten public disclosure even if you can restore from backup.
- Small and medium organisations are the growing target as large firms and critical infrastructure harden their defences; do not assume you are too small to matter.
- Use free national resources (threat publications, DNS filtering services such as Canadian Shield) rather than building everything in-house.
Speakers
Daniel Couillard
Daniel Couillard est directeur général des partenariats au Centre canadien pour la cybersécurité (CCC). L’objectif de ce directorat est d’accroître la cyberrésilience du Canada en collaboration avec ses partenaires. Daniel a également occupé des… Read moreRead less
Daniel Couillard est directeur général des partenariats au Centre canadien pour la cybersécurité (CCC). L’objectif de ce directorat est d’accroître la cyberrésilience du Canada en collaboration avec ses partenaires.
Daniel a également occupé des postes de direction au CCC et a travaillé avec les Forces armées canadiennes ainsi qu’avec le Secrétariat du Conseil du Trésor du Canada. Il est titulaire d’un baccalauréat en génie et d’une maîtrise en sciences.
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Daniel Couillard is the Director General of Cyber Partnership at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS). The directorate’s goal is to increase Canada’s cyber resilience in collaboration with partners.
Daniel also held previous executive roles at the CCCS and has worked with the Canadian Armed Forces as well as the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a Master’s in Science.
