A “cyber incident” that knocked the National Research Council offline last year was a foreign attack, the agency confirms. It would not elaborate, according to Blacklock's Reporter..“The audit report will not be published,” the council said in a statement..“The Research Council has diligently considered the need for openness, accountability and transparency. In doing so, the council has thoroughly weighed the public interest for disclosure against the need to ensure security of its network and systems.”.The agency last March 18 announced it was knocked offline..“Due to a cyber incident some applications on our website were taken offline and may be unavailable,” managers wrote in a notice at the time. “We are working to bring applications back online as soon as possible.”.The incident was never explained, however, in a brief report Audit Of Cyber Incident Response, the Research Council confirmed it was a foreign attack..The agency invoked the Access To Information Act section 16.2 in withholding records. Section 16.2 states: “The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record that contains information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada.”.“The defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada includes efforts of Canada or foreign states toward the detection, prevention or suppression of activities of any foreign state directed toward actual or potential attack or other acts of aggression against Canada,” the act reads..According to Treasury Board figures submitted last April 21 to the Commons government operations committee, attempted hacks are commonplace at federal IT systems..“In the last year there were a total of 308 cyber incidents reported,” said a board report..“We do have a number of hacks,” Paul Wagner, deputy chief information officer, testified last March 1. “The infrastructure and our environment are attacked daily, hourly and every minute.”.“We have systems deployed to mitigate those situations,” said Wagner. “There are more situations mitigated than we actually have to deal with as incidents in departments.”.A federal periodical Canadian Government Executive in 2017 reported many agencies were unprepared for cyberattacks due to aging technology and poor coordination..“A lot of computer systems are legacy systems that have been around for decades,” said analyst Nestor Arellano, author of an essay headlined: Canadian Government Not Prepared To Stave Off Cyberattacks..Security audits found “federal information technology systems are ill-equipped to handle potential cyberattacks,” wrote Arellano.
