Grant: College and Community Innovation Program

Durham College's multisectoral small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) partners have identified an urgent need for support to address the escalating risks and rising costs of privacy and data security. In response, Durham College launched a new virtual centre, the Centre for Cybersecurity Innovation, in February 2020 as part of a plan to increase cybersecurity applied research capacity. Funding from the NSERC College and Community Innovation Program - Innovation Enhancement grant and CFI College Industry Innovation Fund will enable the college to leverage this nascent capacity. The objective is to establish a single unified source for SMEs in the Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Area to evaluate, develop, and deploy cybersecurity systems to detect, prevent, and respond to cyber attacks efficiently. The program of applied research will focus on creating prototypes and beta environments for security risks and support applied research on anomaly detection and simulations within virtual environments. This will enable SMEs to monitor their networks and endpoints for vulnerabilities, protect their sensitive data and comply with industry and government regulations. The program of applied research falls under two thematic areas: (1) support for cybersecurity companies that need to extend their capabilities to understand and address the attack surfaces of critical/essential services. Our program of applied research will examine the vulnerabilities embedded within surveillance systems used to deliver and monitor consumer services; and (2) support for companies with critical infrastructure and operations, focused on the development of new technological stacks to monitor, alert and prevent anomalous attacks faced by multisectoral SMEs. Through collaborative applied research, SMEs will have customized cybersecurity tools for their protection, and be transformed into cyber risk-aware organizations. This will increase consumer confidence in the digital economy, promote international standardization, and better positions Canadian SMEs to compete globally.