Canadian government investing to counter attacks

Noting that federal government departments and agencies had been the targets of several serious cyberattacks in the first quarter of 2014, documents obtained by the media show that Shared Services Canada plans to spend $55 million to upgrade IT infrastructure. That investment is in addition to $32.5 million the government committed to spending in the wake of last July's attack on the National Research Council's network. That attack, blamed by the government on Chinese nationals, forced the organization to overhaul its systems, a process that will not be completed until summer 2015.

The documents, which were released to Postmedia's Ottawa Citizen through an access to information request, reveal that the government also responded to a number of “potentially critical or extensive compromises” between January and March 2014.

In a briefing note prepared for the president of Shared Services Canada, plans are laid out to spend $40 to maintain the infrastructure that protects secret data and commit another $15 million to begin a project related to secure, web-based voice calls. By 2020, the plan is to amalgamate 30 existing networks into one.