Canada Fighting “Billions” of Attacks a Day, Cyber Agency Says

Hailshadow/iStock

This story was originally published on thewalrus.ca

By Wesley Wark

The annual reports from Communications Security Establishment Canada make for unexpectedly good reading. In recent years, the intelligence and cybersecurity agency has intercepted foreign espionage efforts, extremist networks, cybercriminal crews, and sprawling disinformation campaigns. The newest edition recounts how, in 2024, its units shut down a ransomware threat aimed at a Canadian industrial sector in only forty-eight hours.

The CSE patrols a vast digital turf, its most critical work largely invisible to the public. But as it prepares to turn eighty, the organization’s role has never been more central, with Canada’s most basic systems—from energy infrastructure to elections—now prime targets for adversaries.

CSE origins stretch back to 1941, when Canada created the Examination Unit (XU), the country’s first civilian bureau devoted to breaking and protecting coded communications. During the war, the XU decrypted enemy messages and forged intelligence relationships that would later anchor today’s Five Eyes alliance. The bureau’s success convinced Ottawa that understanding foreign networks was strategically indispensable, and, in 1946, the Communications Branch of the National Research Council was established—what we now know as CSE.

In the conversation that follows, I spoke to CSE chief Caroline Xavier, by email, about that legacy and the challenges facing the agency today.

You can’t share stories from thewalrus.ca on Facebook or Instagram because of Meta’s response to the Online News Act, but you can share this Substack article there

Looking back, what would you say are the biggest changes that have affected the organization?

From its earliest days, CSE has operated behind the scenes. As technology evolved, so did CSE. We embraced computing early, becoming Canada’s largest supercomputer user by the mid-1990s. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War challenged us to redefine our mission. We responded by expanding our workforce, recruiting linguists, engineers, and computer scientists, and fostering a more diverse and multidisciplinary organization.

The events of 9/11 reshaped global security, and CSE’s role was formally recognized under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act. In 2011, we became a stand-alone agency. And in 2019, the CSE Act expanded our mandate to include active and defensive foreign cyber operations. Another major milestone came in 2018 with the launch of our Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, or Cyber Centre. This unites cyber experts from across government, and has positioned us as a world-class authority on cybersecurity, defending