Cyber Literacy Journeys North

In this special Global Tech Zone feature, we take a look at what’s behind New Brunswick, Canada’s booming cybersecurity sector.

- Everin Draper

“Cybercrime, by definition, is the greatest threat to every profession, every industry, every company in the world.”

This was the bold statement made by IBM CEO and Founder Ginni Rometty at the 2015 IBM Security Summit in New York City. This claim isn’t without support. Cybersecurity Ventures released a study suggesting that the cost of cybercrime could increase to $6 trillion globally by 2021. And this news is only made worse by the security firm ISACA’s 2016 report claiming there will be a global shortage of cyber security professionals of 2 million by 2019. This gulf between the severity of the problem and society’s lack of cyber knowledge has led security companies like IBM to expand their operations and further promote the importance of cybersecurity – and not just in the U.S. In fact, in 2009, IBM purchased the Fredericton-based cybersecurity firm Q1 Labs for an estimated $600 million, one of the largest technology acquisitions in Canadian history. Shortly after that, IBM invested in a multimillion-dollar collaborative research agreement with the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Information Security Center of Excellence to develop an intelligent toolset for automated security analysis and risk management.