Canada still isn’t ready to combat the sharp rise of cybercrime

While the cyber security economy outpaces growth in the tech sector globally, the challenge of resiliency is fast becoming a zero-sum game.

Schemes have become much more sophisticated because of AI and more widespread as digital adoption increases — leading to more frequent and severe attacks. Yet Canada’s private and public sectors still aren’t equipped to fight cybercrime effectively. In 2023, there were over 70,000 cybersecurity incidents — a 25 per cent jump compared to the year before. In addition, the total cost of cybercrime is estimated to be over $3 billion. 

Considering a lack of cyber skills has been linked to 90 per cent of organizations experiencing data breaches, we hosted a #VTJtalks with two leading companies for insights on what organizations need to know about emerging threats and the potential consequences and solutions:

• Ntirety, one of the top managed services providers in the world that offers its services through partner Edge Telecom

• Dialpad, an AI-powered business communications platform founded by the inventor of Google Voice

Emerging cyber threats

Creighton Lee, solutions architect at Ntirety, said the top emerging cyber threat is ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), a subscription-based business model that allows criminal enterprises to execute ransomware attacks.

“RaaS enables even novice threat actors, such as students or people who don't know anything about IT, to execute devastating attacks with very minimal effort,” said Lee.

A second emerging cyber threat is smarter social engineering attacks, which use psychological manipulation to trick users into performing specific actions, including giving away sensitive information.

“Gone are the days of telltale signs of incorrect grammar, spelling mistakes, typos, unfamiliar greeting, and inconsistencies with formatting and links — making modern phishing schemes seem more convincing, personalized, and challenging to detect,” highlighted Lee.

A third emerging cyber threat is cloud security misconfigurations, which can lead to data breaches where sensitive information is exposed to unauthorized users.

“The shift to cloud computing, remote work, and decentralized teams has expanded the attack surface and increased the risk exposure to cyber security attacks,” added Lee.

Another cyber threat to keep on the radar is the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that remains the fastest-growing service in history.

While over 60 per cent of employees use ChatGPT for work more than once a week, 41 per cent of organizations still do not have a policy on using generative AI at work. This gap puts organizations at risk, given if employees enter sensitive or other internal information into ChatGPT, it could be shared with others and even attributed to their organization.

Potential consequences and solutions

Not having all bases covered or cutting corners with cyber security can lead to irreversible harm. The consequences include operational disruption, financial and recovery costs, and the loss of customer trust and confidence.

For companies looking for support to prevent cyber threats, partnering with an experienced managed service provider (MSP) can be a viable solution. Ntirety, for example, can help reduce risks and improve business agility and optimize IT spending.

Ntirety’s comprehensive approach includes managing four critical areas: secure management of cloud infrastructure, comprehensive protection of users, systems, and data, maximizing the value and protection of data, and guidance in meeting regulations and reducing risks. 

To date, Ntirety helps over 2,500 enterprise clients, blocks nearly two million cyber attacks monthly, and has not experienced any breaches across its security environments throughout its 25 years in business.

As for companies looking to securely leverage generative AI, Diaplad, offers its own large language model (LLM), DialpadGPT. 

Along with DialpadGPT offering heightened privacy with compliance requirements beyond end-to-end encryption, the tool works alongside Dialpad’s features, such as voice transcription, AI CSAT, and agent assists. 

DialpadGPT can also be customized for specific business needs since it’s built on more than six years of proprietary data and works with over 50 dedicated data scientists, machine learning (ML) engineers, and linguists.

Final takeaway

Ultimately, becoming more resilient to cybercrime is mandatory for future security and business growth. 

Fortunately, there are leading companies like Ntirety and Dialpad that have a track record of robust approaches and leading products with both priorities in mind.