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CyberCap Interview: Khalil Aguelmous (SIA)
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About this session
A CyberCap interview with Khalil Aguelmous, director of cybersecurity, data protection and IT risk at SIA Partners, who founded the firm's cybersecurity practice in Canada. He describes a non-linear path from financial risk analysis into cybersecurity, driven by wanting to protect people, not just balance sheets, from the impact of an outage at a bank, hospital or university. Asked about challenges specific to Quebec and Canada, he points to a dual regulatory landscape (provincial Law 25 alongside federal Bill C-27), uneven organizational maturity, lower awareness than in Europe, and a global talent shortage that pushes firms to hire internationally while local university programs slowly build a pipeline. He describes resilience work as starting from what is truly critical, testing plans rather than leaving them in a drawer, and adapting the message for executives, directors and operational teams, tying it to governance and a clear chain of command. He welcomes youth cybersecurity education, noting younger generations are growing up better able to spot deepfakes and manipulated video, and closes by urging listeners to stay curious, valuing diverse professional backgrounds on a team over a single technical profile.
Key takeaways
- Start resilience planning by identifying what is truly critical to the organization, then map which people, buildings and applications support it, before writing a plan.
- Test continuity and crisis plans regularly; teams that believe they are ready often discover gaps only during an exercise.
- Adapt the resilience and governance message by audience: executives, department directors and operational teams each need a different level of detail and a clear role.
- Track the applicable regulatory layers separately, provincial (Law 25) and federal (Bill C-27), since Canadian organizations face both at once.
- Hire for curiosity and diverse professional backgrounds, not only certifications; teams that mix engineering, marketing and legal perspectives handle novel problems better.
Speakers
Khalil Aguelmous
Khalil possède un parcours international qui l’a mené de l’audit financier aux risques opérationnels bancaires, puis à la cybersécurité. Il a accompagné des organisations publiques et privées en Europe, au Moyen-Orient et en Amérique du Nord, en… Read moreRead less
Khalil possède un parcours international qui l’a mené de l’audit financier aux risques opérationnels bancaires, puis à la cybersécurité. Il a accompagné des organisations publiques et privées en Europe, au Moyen-Orient et en Amérique du Nord, en pilotant des projets stratégiques visant à renforcer leur résilience et à sécuriser leurs activités critiques. Reconnu pour son leadership et sa capacité à structurer des pratiques robustes de gestion des risques, il accorde une importance particulière à la création de relations humaines de confiance et au développement de partenariats durables. Son approche allie vision stratégique et pragmatisme, avec la conviction que la cybersécurité est avant tout un levier pour protéger la mission et les valeurs des organisations.
