INTERVIEW with Daniel Blanc, New Executive Director of the INCYBER Canada Forum

You were recently appointed General Manager of the INCYBER Forum Canada. What is your vision for this event?

My intent and that of the entire INCYBER team is to make this event the premier must-attend cybersecurity and digital conference in Canada. Our success has been in making sure we bring political/policy decision-makers together with operational and technical experts to truly develop greater awareness, greater understanding, and unity of effort in dealing with the challenges of cybersecurity. The public and private relationships are key, as is ensuring that industry and academia are all working together since cybersecurity is fully interlinked with both economic and national security in Canada. In addition, these relationships and opportunities are not only with the Federal and Provincial/Territorial governments, but are also international as well. Our true success is about connecting stakeholders internally while establishing relationships with Allies and Partners around the globe. This year, we will have large delegations from numerous European countries coming to Canada for this event. The opportunities are boundless.

Your military career, particularly in cyber operations within the Canadian Armed Forces, placed you at the heart of digital security challenges. What lessons from that experience are you bringing into this new role?

I think the primary lesson is around the need to build trust face to face. Email and calls are one thing, but to truly develop enduring relationships in the cyber or digital space there has to be that face-to-face engagement so that you can speak about sensitive things in a meaningful way. This is even more important in the international space since traveling to an Allied nation and taking the time to meet in their Headquarters or in their units shows a level of commitment to the mission or task at hand. You need to build trust at the personal level. This translates to the private sector as well. Business is best started and developed face to face.

Canada faces unique cyber challenges—vast geography, dispersed critical infrastructure, and close ties with the United States. In your view, what are the most pressing cybersecurity issues specific to the Canadian context?

I think there are many challenges, but I recommend we focus on two to start with, and they are the need for investment in technology and people. If we are going to stay ahead of the threat actors, we must be prepared to invest at speed and scale while being prepared to take some calculated risks in certain areas. I know this is tough for some governments and companies, but taking calculated risks will allow us to keep ahead of the adversary who has no constraints. This means streamlining the policy, legal, governance, and oversight constructs which the adversary does not have to deal with.

The second is investment in people. Canada has an incredibly well-educated and capable digital workforce. We just need to start earlier, develop them faster, and be creative to generate much more of them. The demand is high in the government, private industry, and academia. We need to invest much more in developing the digital workforce of the future.

Why is an event like the INCYBER Forum essential today?

We must continue to expand our personnel networks and connections in Canada with its vast cyber ecosystem and also connect it to the world. This event is an opportunity to have the discussions, share the lessons learned, and exchange best practices regarding respective policies and approach the challenges we all face, while also understanding what new tools and capabilities are being brought to market or are in the innovation space.

With threats evolving rapidly — from artificial intelligence to cybercrime and geopolitical tensions — what emerging issues do you believe we must anticipate most urgently?

The adoption of AI and Quantum, of course, jump out at us today and these are critical. But we need to ensure that we can move at much greater speed and scale needed to defend and secure our digital equities. This is becoming more challenging as nations try to prioritize their budgets and companies try to work in a time of some instability in the world. This means we need to double our efforts and invest in the technology and people as I mentioned before. Smart, hardworking people are going to work through the challenges and solve these issues like they always do.

As the new Director General of the INCYBER Forum Canada, how do you see the event evolving in the years ahead?

I think we have an opportunity to grow and connect even more. We are keen to expand in Canada and have more engagements with Provinces, Territories, First Nations, and Municipalities in the coming years. Connecting these levels of government and industry partners with our already robust event in Europe and soon in Japan is critical. The relationships we develop make this truly a global event and there is an intent to expand more in the future.