Cybersecurity experts from across the country are coming to Windsor next week to put a fictional cyber crisis to the test. Operation: Defend the North takes place Oct. 20 at the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts. The centrepiece is a live tabletop exercise based on a fictional cyberattack involving the Windsor-Detroit tunnel, with participants working through how they would respond as the situation changes. Amar Singh is St. Clair College’s Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer and says the exercise will walk attendees through different stages, including how those involved contain the incident and eventually restore operations. “It’s built to provide communities and leaders an understanding of what happens when a major cyber incident can impact critical services, and such as transportation, banking, food services, schools, you name it, because cyber touches everything,” Singh told AM800’s Mornings with Mike and Meg. Singh says preparation is particularly important for smaller organizations, which may underestimate the consequences until an incident occurs. “You have potential revenue loss. You have a reputational hit to your business. You have cost of the cyber event because you’re going to pay legal. You’re going to pay insurance. You’re going to pay experts to come in and fix, clean, eradicate the issue,” Singh said. He says the day also includes Young Defenders of the North, a hackathon giving area high school students a chance to try cybersecurity with help from college mentors and teachers. “The world is technology, it’s digital, everything is digital these days. And to understand that whole piece and then kind of work their career towards that, like today’s student, they’re going to be defenders of our data tomorrow. So the sooner they start and the sooner they understand, the better,” Singh said. Operation: Defend the North runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 20, followed by a cybersecurity meetup from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. The event is open to business owners, cybersecurity and IT professionals, students and members of the public. Registration details can be found here.
