As a CANARIE Member, your engagement and participation has enabled us to achieve the following significant milestones in our programs and initiatives over the past year:
CANARIE Year in Review 2022-23
Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN)
To advance the foundational component of Canada’s digital research infrastructure (DRI) ecosystem, we:
- invested in the operation of the CANARIE backbone to support 22% annual traffic growth.
- completed a pilot to improve research and education connectivity to public-cloud data centres.
- launched a competitive funding call to increase access to, and use of, the NREN.
- hosted the fifth annual NREN Assembly, which brought together staff from CANARIE and our thirteen provincial and territorial partners across the country to define and prioritize activities that support the evolution of Canada’s NREN.
- continued leading the development of a dynamic map of the GREN – the Global Research and Education Network.
Cybersecurity
To advance cybersecurity skills, processes, and tools across Canada’s research and education sector, we:
- integrated CanSSOC into a new Cybersecurity Programs and Services department in CANARIE, bringing it together with the Cybersecurity Initiatives Program (CIP) and the Canadian Access Federation, to strengthen the coordinated national approach to cybersecurity.
- launched the fifth initiative under the CIP, the National Cybersecurity Assessment, which allows organizations to gain insights into the maturity of their cybersecurity capacity and capabilities against the globally recognized NIST framework.
- hosted a series of workshops around the country to obtain community input and develop alignment around the vision, value, and operational concepts for a federated Security Operations Centre for the research and education community.
Identity and Access Management
To enable Canada’s higher education students, staff, and faculty to securely connect to eduroam and to a global catalogue of academic services, we:
- launched a proof of concept for integrating Multifactor Authentication (MFA) in our Federated Identity Management (FIM) service.
- increased the number of public, non-academic locations (e.g., libraries, municipal offices and arenas, and airports) that are broadcasting eduroam.
Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR)
To spur Canadian businesses to adopt transformative cloud technologies and gain a competitive edge, we:
- grew participation in the DAIR Cloud program to over 1,850 Canadian Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), who used DAIR to accelerate their product development and testing.
- initiated funding the development of three new BoosterPacks, to provide Canadian small and medium businesses with sample code and a curated set of learning resources on emerging technologies.
Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Evolution
To support the evolution of Canada’s DRI ecosystem, in line with the Government of Canada’s DRI Strategy, we:
- worked with The Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) to ensure integration between the two organizations’ approaches and programming.
- responded to a request from the Government of Canada to extend our current 2020-24 funding agreement until March 2025.
CANARIE Summit 2022
To highlight Canada’s evolving digital economy and showcase Canadian innovation, we:
- hosted leaders from the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors for two days of thought-provoking presentations and discussions relating to inspiring collaborations; the average rating of attendees’ experience at the event was 4.8 out of 5.
Research Software
To help accelerate discovery and leverage public investments in research, we:
- held the Canadian Research Software Conference (CRSC) 2022 – the last CRSC to be hosted by CANARIE, marking the official transition of our Research Software activities to the Alliance.
Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN)
To support Canadian innovation in information and communications technologies, we:
- continued to provide support for CENGN’s activities to foster the development of next generation network technologies and solutions.
Thank you for your continued support of CANARIE’s initiatives through your Membership. Your ongoing engagement helps drive the evolution of critical programs that serve the needs of Canada’s research, education, and innovation sector.