Just over a year after announcing an updated federal cybersecurity strategy, Ottawa has revealed how it will be implemented.
The action plan for improving the resilience of the federal and critical infrastructure includes $10.3 million over five years for special projects created by provincial, territorial and municipal governments, researchers, commercial companies and not for profits. Of that total, $2.3 million has been set aside for the next 12 months.
The action plan timetable also suggests a promised cyber certification program for small and medium-sized companies to publicly show they meet minimum security standards could be launched before the end of this year.
Cyber projects looking for federal funding must come under one of three categories:
- Security and Resilience – this includes research and development of new technologies and tools for increasing the security and resilience of Canadian cyber systems, and support for non-federal partners’ implementing actions to better protect their systems and information
- Cyber Innovation – R&D for tools to address threats posed emerging technologies like IoT or quantum computing), academic research on trends, training and…
