Overview

The Cyber Security Centre of Excellence helps educate Ontario government ministries and broader public sector organizations about cyber security and best practices to keep Ontarians’ information safe and secure. We provide advice, guidance, information and services to strengthen digital resilience while meeting digital service delivery expectations.

Examples of broader public sector organizations include:

  • hospitals
  • universities
  • colleges
  • municipalities
  • school boards
  • children's aid societies
  • community care access corporations
  • corporations controlled by one or more designated public service organization(s) that exist(s) solely or primarily for the purpose of purchasing goods or services for said organizations
  • publicly funded organizations that receive $10 million or more from the Government of Ontario

The Cyber Security Centre of Excellence offers education and awareness materials about cyber security. You can access online learning modules to complete training on foundational cyber security topics.

Subscribe to receive notifications and services from the Cyber Security Centre of Excellence by accessing the Cyber Security Ontario webpage.

Cyber Security Awareness Month

Cyber Security Awareness Month is an annual campaign held in October to inform on the importance of cyber security.

Cyber Security Awareness Month: K-12 Zone

The Cyber Security Awareness Month: K-12 Zone is a new educational website for K-12 students, teachers and parents. The K-12 Zone features games, interactive articles and videos to educate on cyber security risks like cyber bullying, online privacy and password safety.

During Cyber Security Awareness Month, we will discuss the following topics: 

Mission 1: Identify & Access (Protecting Sensitive Information)

  • Tip: Data and information fall into several classification levels from unclassified to high sensitivity. Remember, cyber security is everyone’s responsibility, so be sure to classify your documents to prevent unauthorized access.

Mission 2: Research & Investigation (Reconnaissance)

  • Tip: Think about personal and organizational safety before posting online. You should always check that your post does not contain sensitive or confidential information to decrease the risk of a cyber-attack.

Mission 3: Tricks & Traps (Cyber Attacks)

  • Tip: If you receive information from unknown sources, ignore the request for personal information and do not visit suspicious web pages. Remember, think before you click.

Mission 4: Prevent & Protect (Cyber Hygiene)

  • Tip: To create a complex password try to think of something unexpected that contains uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters.

Community of Practice

The Community of Practice is a network of cyber practitioners in the broader public sector that participate in regular webinars to stay up-to-date on the latest cyber security news and information from the Cyber Security Centre of Excellence.

Request to join the Community of Practice

Vendor of Record program

The Vendor of Record program provides high-quality products and services at competitive pricing for broader public sector organizations.

You can find frequently requested vendor services, such as cyber incident response and forensics, in Tender-11558 – IT Security Products and Services on the Supply Chain Ontario website.

Cyber Security Expert Panel

The Cyber Security Expert Panel was established in October 2020 to provide the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery with recommendations to improve digital resilience across government and the broader public sector. The expert panel’s final report was released in October 2022 and is part of Ontario’s first-ever Cyber Security Strategy — an important milestone in our efforts to improve our cyber resilience.

In their report, the expert panel provides recommendations to help the Ontario Public Service and broader public sector organizations become more cyber resilient through better preparation, prevention, and response. The report includes guidance on how municipalities and organizations, like hospitals, school boards, colleges and universities, and children’s aid societies, can prevent and respond to future cyber attacks.

Sign up for cyber security services

To ensure that you have the latest information on cyber security services, you can:

  • protect your assets by registering with vendors to receive security information specific to your technology products
  • sign up to receive alerts and advisories from the Cyber Security Centre of Excellence to ensure your organization has the latest information about potential or imminent cyber threats
  • subscribe to receive notifications and services from the Cyber Security Centre of Excellence, by accessing the Cyber Security Ontario web page.
  • read alerts and advisories available from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security

Sign up now

More information about our services can be found in our Service Catalogue.

Policy and standards

The Government of Ontario Information and Technology Standards (GO-ITS) Security Standards are the official standards adopted by the Government of Ontario.

Contact us

To learn more about our services, please visit Cyber Security Ontario or email us at: cybersecurity@ontario.ca.