Are Canadian Companies Learning from Global Cyber Attacks? Insider Insights into the Secret Downfall of Canadian Businesses

Toronto, ON — 

July 25, 2025 — As Canadian firms scramble to review their cybersecurity posture in the wake of recent government warnings about state-aligned threat actors, some experts warn that many businesses are still failing to translate lessons into action, even when the wake-up calls are happening at home.

In an exclusive interview with ODTN News, Dr. Emilie Zhang, a professor of digital risk and enterprise resilience at the fictional Northland Institute of Technology, says too many Canadian firms are treating cyber threats like distant hypotheticals, not immediate business risks.

“The breaches have already happened here — in our supply chains, our telcos, our utilities. From RedLake to Trinexus to the CanPharma attack, these were not drills,” said Zhang. “But we’re still acting like someone else will handle it.”

Her comments follow last week’s unprecedented joint alert from the Federal Office of Data Integrity (FODI) and the Cybersecurity Oversight Commission of Canada (COCC), which warned of “imminent risk of sustained cyber attacks” against critical government infrastructure.

Zhang, however, believes that the business community is the real soft target.

“Governments may move slowly, but at least they’re moving. A lot of companies still treat cybersecurity like IT plumbing; invisible until it breaks.”

A Pattern of Ignored Warnings

Over the past three years, multiple major Canadian firms have fallen victim to preventable breaches:

• RedLake Freight Systems (2022): A ransomware event shut down logistics operations across three provinces for nearly a week, exposing payroll records and driver credentials.
• Trinexus Solutions (2023): A supplier to provincial health authorities suffered a supply chain compromise that led to the leak of anonymized but re-identifiable patient datasets.
• CanPharma Group (2024): A cloud misconfiguration exposed nearly 1.2 million prescription histories, prompting a joint privacy investigation in Ontario and B.C.

Despite these incidents, Zhang says the same mistakes keep repeating.

“Weak MFA, poor vendor controls, no tabletop exercises. These aren’t zero-day exploits — they’re zero-effort breaches.”

Budget Paralysis and the Illusion of Safety

A recent report by the fictional Canadian Association of Corporate Risk Officers (CACRO) found that 59% of mid-sized firms had not reviewed their incident response plans in over a year, and only 21% had conducted a third-party penetration test since 2022.

“Executives will spend $3 million on rebranding, but flinch at $30,000 for a red team audit,” said Marc Rousseau, a Quebec-based cybersecurity consultant. “There’s still this mindset that good luck is a strategy.”

Zhang argues that Canada is entering a critical learning window.

“We have the advantage of hindsight — not just from abroad, but from our own backyard. But the clock’s ticking. If we don’t treat cyber resilience like a core business function, we’re going to lose more than data.“

Following the risk behind the ROI. — Leila Park

ODTN News’ Ayaan Chowdhury contributed to this report.