{"id":151716,"date":"2023-04-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=916221"},"modified":"2023-04-04T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T00:00:00","slug":"jobs-of-the-future-canadore-college-north-bay-poised-to-play-big-role-in-future-of-canadian-cybersecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/04\/04\/jobs-of-the-future-canadore-college-north-bay-poised-to-play-big-role-in-future-of-canadian-cybersecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobs of the Future: Canadore College, North Bay poised to play big role in future of Canadian cybersecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

ThinkOn's new hub seeking \"thinkers\" that can communicate solid ideas
\nThe gateway to the North may become a major player on Canada\u2019s cybersecurity front.
\nThinkOn, a global security company, is putting down roots in North Bay by partnering with Canadore College in what it calls its Global Command Centre.
\nThe centre houses ThinkOn\u2019s primary cybersecurity operations, a centre of excellence for digital public safety, a professional services group, event and network operations, and application development.
\nThe partnership comes at a crucial time, as Canadians learn more about the reach of foreign influence across the web and see firsthand the kind of havoc that malicious players can wreak on social media.
\nJohn Slater, ThinkOn\u2019s chief security officer, said the changing face of online threats makes Canadian-owned centres \u2014 especially cloud storage services that store government and health care data \u2014 essential.
\n\u201cThe threat actors have changed from some guy in his underwear at home to governments and to criminal organizations,\u201d Slater said.
\n\u201cYou've got companies that are out there, like organized crime groups, and they will hire people on consignment, give them the software tools and let them attack whoever they like.\u201d
\nThose players then get paid via Bitcoin, making the trail all but untraceable.
\n\u201cThe scariest thing to me is when I see on the dark web that a kid in Somalia, maybe used to jump in a boat with a machine gun to take over a ship can now get paid on consignment to break into a company and steal the data,\u201d Slater said.
\nA recent report from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security said cybercrime is still the number one cyber threat activity affecting Canadians, and that state-sponsored cyber programs of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea continue to pose the \u201cgreatest strategic cyber threat to Canada.\u201d
\nThinkOn \u2014 with its data centres in Ottawa, Toronto and soon North Bay \u2014 is the only Canadian company that can provide governments with the required security it needs to house its data, Slater said.
\nThat puts it alongside internet titans Microsoft \u2014 with their Azure cloud network \u2014 and Amazon\u2019s AWS.
\n\u201cOur responsibility is to make sure that all of the infrastructure that we're managing is secure, and safe from attack,\u201d Slater said.
\nTo that end, the centre already employs 28 people \u2014 the company refers to them as \u201cthinkers\u201d \u2014 but it expects to ramp that up as demand for their services increase.
\nNorth Bay: The next tech hub?
\nNorth Bay might not seem like a typical tech-hub setting, but Slater said the city\u2019s \u201cattitude\u201d has been more than receptive, and its collaborative approach between the municipality, Indigenous communities, postsecondary institutes and residents was what sold ThinkOn on setting up shop.
\n\u201cThere is a difference in feeling when working with the people in North Bay,\u201d Slater said. \u201cIt's very difficult to describe, but I can tell you\u2026 (former) Mayor (Al) McDonald was unbelievable in terms of the support. We even had a retreat up in the North Bay last August and we had a fish fry at his house.
\n\u201cThat kind of support is not something that happens in a lot of different areas.\u201d
\nPaul West, one of the company\u2019s directors, describes himself as ThinkOn\u2019s least tech-y employees, but he still found a home in cybersecurity.
\nNow, he\u2019s encouraging all kinds of potential recruits to consider ThinkOn if they\u2019re entering the workforce or \u201cretooling\u201d mid-career.
\n\u201cThe opportunities I have are for good storytellers, for good listeners, for people who can communicate ideas,\u201d West said. \u201cAnd that's not always technology.
\n\u201cIn fact, I'm probably the least technology-minded person in our team, but it's a matter of being able to bring that story forward,\u201d he said. \u201cThat's what I look for when we're tapping into resources in the North.
\n\u201cAnd there are some phenomenal storytellers in [this] community.\u201d
\nSo far, the centre has a combination of skill sets on its roster \u2014 some working on the service desk, people working on the network or security, and application developers. ThinkOn has also formed a partnership with the First Peoples\u2019 Circle on Education, a not-for-profit organization that supports and empowers Indigenous people to independently deliver services and address socioeconomic conditions in their communities.
\n\u201cI think people want to be able to ask themselves, where is my job of the future going to be? What experience do I need?\u201d West said.
\n\u201cIt's not always somebody coming through high school and choosing that path in postsecondary. There are also adult learners and people retooling mid-career who might be working in other industries in Northern Ontario, that want to experience an opportunity in tech.
\n\u201cAnd we can bring those to them. Because of the nature of our industry, through conductivity, we can virtually work anywhere.\u201d
\nNow that ThinkOn is making a home in North Bay, what\u2019s next for the security company? The key could be in the development of what they\u2019re calling their \u201ccyber range.\u201d
\nImagine an arena where one can simulate and learn to deal with the experience of being hacked, or being the victim of a ransomware attack.
\nWest says it\u2019s like a \u201cflight simulator for cybercrimes.\u201d
\n\u201cFor educators in college and university and in government, we have the ability to safely train operators in defensive measures and detection measures\u2026 they can virtually understand what goes on and they're equipped to respond as the cyber events and attacks occur,\u201d West said.
\nAs for any suggestions for day-to-day users of social media who may not often think about cybercrimes or data security, West said the key is to be careful when it comes to offering up data freely to internet giants.
\n\u201cI think inside the tools of social media, whether it's TikTok or Google or Facebook, we need to have a personal vigilance around what we're choosing to disclose and why we're choosing to disclose it,\u201d West said.
\n\u201cWhether it's health records, whether it's DNA and ancestry records. There's a lot of data out there that could be misused or abused.\u201d
\nIn February, the federal government banned TikTok from all government devices, citing an \u201cunacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.\u201d
\nThat type of suspicion around companies \u2014 and foreign governments \u2014 will likely increase in the future as the capacity to do more with personal devices increases.
\n\u201cBut it's all about disclosure,\u201d West said. \u201cIt's all about motive. It's all about monetization and motivation, that we're trying to make sure that we're doing our very best to disclose that we're trustworthy.
\n\u201cWe believe that ThinkOn is hiring trustworthy people, particularly trustworthy people in North Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ThinkOn's new hub seeking \"thinkers\" that can communicate solid ideas
\nThe gateway to the North may become a major player on Canada\u2019s cybersecurity front.
\nThinkOn, a global security company, is putting down roots in North Bay by partnering with Canador…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[692,144,325,113,872,4,873,288,360,194,222,249,106,465,78,1542,334],"tags":[5567,7705,10309,1845,6823,10315,1868,10341,10310],"class_list":["post-151716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-china","category-education","category-google","category-hacker","category-internet","category-iran","category-medicine","category-microsoft","category-news-chinese-law","category-online-video","category-russia","category-search-engine","category-social-media","category-software","category-technology","category-university","tag-bitcoin","tag-blockchain","tag-bytedance","tag-facebook","tag-fintech","tag-media-intelligence","tag-north-korea","tag-seafood","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151717,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151716\/revisions\/151717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}