Cyber attacks are getting easier, experts warn after 3rd federal incident

High-profile cyber incidents involving Canada’s financial intelligence unit FINTRAC, the RCMP and Global Affairs Canada since the start of the year are not isolated cases, experts warn.

They’re part of a rise in criminal cyber activity experts say is driven by tools to commit illicit acts becoming cheaper and easier to use and by insufficient cyber defences.

They warn the number and severity of attacks will keep getting worse.

“We see more data breaches, we see larger data breaches happening more often,” Canada Security and Privacy Research Chair Natalia Stakhanova said from Saskatoon.

She specified that cybercrime is not a new issue but the recent activities are “an indication that the level of the defences and protection we have in organizations is lacking.”

FINTRAC, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, on Sunday shut down some of its systems after experiencing a “cyber incident.”

The RCMP was hit by a “cyber event” two weeks ago, and launched a criminal probe as a result.

Global Affairs Canada saw its networks compromised in January, with an internal email seen by Global News referring to it as  an “unauthorized access to personal information of users including employees.”

Oil giant Suncor reported a cyberattack last July, another cyber “incident” shut down the Toronto Public Library for months, half of B.C. businesses say they’ve been hit by cyberattacks, the Toronto Zoo had employees’ personal information stolen, and, among many other events, the City of Hamilton suffered a ransomware attack on Monday.

“The more we rely on technologies, the more we will have these attacks,” said Saqib Hakak with the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, and University of New Brunswick professor.

“With more