The Standards Council of Canada will join federal partners to deliver the new CyberSecure Canada certification program.

The voluntary program was announced by the Honourable Bill Morneau, Minister of Finance today in Fredericton, New Brunswick and will be administered by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. It provides a straightforward, low-cost way for small and medium-sized enterprises — meaning those with 500 or fewer employees — to protect themselves from the most common cyber threats. Certification involves implementing a basic set of security measures from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

As the program’s sole accreditation body, SCC is developing a scheme to rigorously assess the providers who will certify small and medium-sized organizations, and to ensure consistency across providers.

As Canada’s national accreditation body, SCC is respected around the world for our high-quality accreditation services,” said Elias Rafoul, SCC’s Vice-President of Accreditation Services. “We are  pleased to join this effort to protect Canadian enterprises from devastating cyber attacks on digital systems.”

Organizations that fail to guard against cyber attacks put their intellectual property, consumer data, and their viability at risk. Getting certified by SCC-accredited experts will help them avoid the most common threats, recover faster from attacks, and win customer trust.

CyberSecure Canada is part of the federal government’s National Cyber Security Strategy and supports Canada’s Digital Charter.