Enhancing Canadian Cybersecurity with ThreatNG: Addressing Canada's Evolving Cyber Threats (Cyber Centre Assessment 2025-2026)
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security's (Cyber Centre) "National Cyber Threat Assessment 2025-2026" provides a stark overview of Canada's growing cyber threats. This article summarizes the assessment's key findings, focusing on the evolving nature of these threats and offering actionable insights for enhancing cybersecurity posture in Canada. It highlights explicitly how ThreatNG, an all-in-one external attack surface management and digital risk protection solution, can assist organizations in meeting these challenges.
Key Threats Facing Canada
The report highlights several critical threats that ThreatNG is uniquely positioned to address:
Ransomware: Ransomware remains the most significant cyber threat to Canada's critical infrastructure. The report finds that "ransomware is almost certainly the top cybercrime threat facing Canada's critical infrastructure because it can immobilize critical business operations, destroy or damage important business data, and reveal sensitive information." Further, "ransomware actors are constantly evolving their strategies and adapting their techniques to maximize their profits and evade law enforcement detection." ThreatNG's ransomware susceptibility assessment, dark web monitoring, and intelligence repositories on ransomware events and groups directly support the report's emphasis on ransomware preparedness. By identifying vulnerabilities and providing insights into ransomware actors' tactics, ThreatNG enables proactive mitigation.
State-Sponsored Cyber Threat Activity: State adversaries are increasingly bold and aggressive in their cyber operations, targeting critical infrastructure, conducting espionage, and spreading disinformation. The discovery and assessment capabilities of ThreatNG, particularly in areas like BEC and phishing susceptibility, align with the report's concerns about state actors' increasingly aggressive tactics. Continuous monitoring and reporting on compromised credentials and known vulnerabilities further enhance the ability to detect and respond to state-sponsored threats.
Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS): The CaaS model contributes to the rise of cybercrime by providing easy access to malicious tools and services. This allows less technically sophisticated actors to participate in cybercrime, increasing the overall threat landscape, as "specialized threat actors sell stolen and leaked data and ready-to-use malicious tools to other cybercriminals online, enabling their illicit activities." ThreatNG's broad range of assessments, including web application hijack, subdomain takeover, and data leak susceptibility, directly address the CaaS model's role in facilitating various cybercrimes. The platform's intelligence repositories on dark web activities and compromised credentials provide crucial insights into the cybercrime ecosystem, aiding in proactive defense.
Evolving Tradecraft and Tactics
The report emphasizes the dynamic nature of cyber threats, with attackers constantly evolving their tactics to evade detection and maximize impact. ThreatNG helps organizations adapt to these changes by:
Identifying and mitigating Living Off the Land (LOTL) techniques: "Cyber threat actors using living-off-the-land techniques repurpose native system tools and processes already present in the target's environment to move throughout the network discreetly...This makes it challenging for network defenses to detect and discover intrusions." ThreatNG's advanced detection capabilities can identify and flag suspicious activities, even when attackers use LOTL techniques to blend in with normal network operations
Securing edge devices: ThreatNG's comprehensive discovery and vulnerability assessment features help organizations identify and secure vulnerable edge devices, preventing attackers from accessing broader networks. The report states that "cyber threat actors exploit vulnerabilities in security and networking devices that sit at the perimeter of networks...By compromising an edge device, a cyber threat actor can enter a network, monitor, modify, and exfiltrate network traffic flowing through the device, or possibly move deeper into the victim's network."
Mitigating risks from vendor concentration: ThreatNG's cloud and SaaS exposure module helps organizations identify and manage risks associated with vendor concentration, ensuring that their reliance on dominant service providers doesn't translate into a single point of failure. "The provision of many technology services is concentrated, with only a few large providers of a given digital service...A cyber incident impacting a single dominant service provider can impact an entire sector."
Recommendations for Enhancing Cybersecurity
The report provides several key recommendations that ThreatNG directly supports:
Awareness and Best Practices: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring, reporting, and risk exposure assessments promote awareness of vulnerabilities and potential threats. This empowers organizations to adopt best practices and prioritize cybersecurity efforts based on identified risks, aligning with the report's emphasis on proactive measures. The report urges that "the intensity and impact of cyber threats to Canada can be mitigated through awareness and best practices in cyber security by both individuals and organizations."
Collaboration: ThreatNG's comprehensive reporting and intelligence-sharing capabilities facilitate collaboration between security teams, management, and potentially external stakeholders. This collaborative approach is crucial for building resilience against cyber threats, echoing the report's call for collective action.
Proactive Measures: ThreatNG's suite of solutions and features enables organizations to adopt a proactive approach to cybersecurity, including conducting regular vulnerability assessments, implementing strong incident response plans, and investing in advanced security technologies. "Organizations may also consult [the Cyber Centre's] Cross-Sector Cyber Security Readiness Goals Toolkit to learn how to increase their cyber security posture."
Empowering Organizations to Navigate and Overcome the Complexities of Cyber Threats for a Safer Digital Future
The "National Cyber Threat Assessment 2025-2026" outlines Canada's growing cyber threats. ThreatNG offers a comprehensive solution for addressing these challenges, providing organizations with the tools and intelligence they need to enhance their cybersecurity posture and contribute to Canada's more resilient digital landscape. By understanding the evolving nature of cyber threats and leveraging ThreatNG's capabilities, organizations can proactively mitigate risks, adapt to changing tactics, and strengthen their defenses against increasingly sophisticated attackers.
