In the past year, Canada's cyber espionage agency blocked an average of 6.3 billion "malicious actions" per day against the federal government and received ministerial authorization to carry out more active cyber operations abroad than ever before, according to a new report.
In an ever-evolving online landscape, with criminals, hackers, and adversarial state actors seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in Canada, from bringing down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's website to much more malevolent targets, a new report from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) details an increase in efforts made in the past year.
According to the CSE's annual report published on Thursday, the agency's automated defenses protected the federal government from 2.3 trillion "malicious actions," averaging 6.3 billion per day.
As they lead the federal government's cybersecurity operations, the CSE is mandated to focus on foreign intelligence, active and defensive cyber operations, and assist federal partners with cybersecurity protection to counter hostile state activity and cybercrime while disrupting foreign adversaries.
In the past year, with approval from Minister of Defense Anita Anand, the CSE was authorized to carry out one defensive operation and three active operations, the most active operations since the Communications Security Establishment Act came into effect in 2019.
While the CSE does not provide many specific details on what these operations involved, the report notes that this year they conducted active cyber operations to "disrupt and remove terrorist content propagated online by ideologically motivated foreign extremists."
"This disruption fractured the cohesion of the extremist group and significantly reduced its online reach and ability to recruit new members," the agency said in the report.
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