CANARIE Year in Review 2024-25

To support of the Government of Canada’s DRI Strategy and the broader DRI ecosystem, we: 

• Successfully secured funding from the Government of Canada to invest in the evolution of CANARIE’s programs and services for our 2025-2030 Mandate. 
• Continued to work closely with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance), to coordinate and align our activities, including in cybersecurity.  

To help secure Canada’s research and education sector from growing cyber threats, we:  

• Continued work on the CanSSOC Federated SOC Pilot with the goal of understanding the requirements to provide a federated, shared, security operations centre for the entire research and education (R&E) sector in Canada.
• Launched a project to develop an investment analysis and blueprint for cybersecurity for the R&E sector to provide:
  • A comprehensive understanding of the current cybersecurity investment landscape – benchmarking against baseline capabilities identified in complementary cybersecurity programs
  • An outline of the essential components and best practices needed for a secure R&E organization in Canada.
• Completed the third National Cybersecurity Assessment (NCA) to provide an unprecedented view of the sector’s cybersecurity capabilities and the third annual Cybersecurity Initiatives Program (CIP) Survey to continue to evolve funded services to meet the needs of our community.
• Supported collaborative R&D cybersecurity projects funded by the Research-Intensive Group (RIG) of universities.
• Launched Dark Web Monitoring within the CanSSOC Threat Feed service, following research and development funding from the RIG.
• Hosted the inaugural, standalone Canadian SecuR&E Forum, dedicated to strengthening the diverse community that’s collaborating to secure Canada’s R&E sector.
• Facilitated a Cybersecurity Visioning and Strategic Alignment Workshop in response to community feedback, to align on the vision, priorities, and roles and responsibilities of all contributors to the sector’s cybersecurity.
• Evolved the focus of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee to enable more strategic guidance of CANARIE’s evolving cybersecurity services portfolio.
• Collaborated on an ongoing basis with the Alliance to better secure the sector and simplify the ecosystem for institutions.  

To help Canadian businesses adopt cloud technologies to accelerate their product development and time to market, we: 

• Increased participation in the DAIR Cloud Program to over 2,100 Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), providing access to cloud resources at no cost.
• Released two new BoosterPacks – curated packages of resources and tools to support early-stage startups adopting transformative technologies. 

To highlight Canada’s evolving digital economy, showcase innovation, and strengthen connections across the research, education, and innovation communities, we: 

• Welcomed 200+ leaders from the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors for a day and a half of thought-provoking presentations and discussions focused on the positive transformative impact of innovation for our shared future.