FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions About CCTX

Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange.

The CCTX is a private sector, not-for-profit, cross-sector and membership-funded cyber threat sharing hub and collaboration organization that was launched in December 2015. The Board of Directors comprises senior cyber security leaders from the largest corporations in Canada, and is supported by government and academia. Membership in the CCTX is available to Canadian businesses and organizations legally registered to conduct business in Canada.

The CCTX provides a current, focused view of cyber events directly impacting Canadian business, along with mitigation options and tools to combat identified threats. By aggregating data on threats, vulnerabilities and risks, and analyzing this information to produce pertinent, timely and actionable intelligence, the CCTX adds value that it shares with members. The CCTX is a forum for exchanging best practices, techniques and insights.

The CCTX is member-driven and governed by a Board of Directors. Each Director serves a two-year term and is elected by Members. Day-to-day management of the CCTX is the responsibility of the Executive Director, who is appointed by and reports to the Board. The CCTX’s business applications, infrastructure and training and logistical support services are provided by a growing team, accountable to the Executive Director.

The CCTX provides a cross sector, exclusively Canadian perspective. Participation spanning diverse sectors ensures a rich exchange of information and best practices. Subscribers have the opportunity to engage with customers and suppliers to improve cyber resilience. Many other information sharing analysis centres have a sector-specific domestic and international focus. CCTX information and analysis—which is based on public and private sector inputs of real cyber events affecting Canadian business—is not diluted by international information that is not pertinent to Canada. At the same time, the CCTX operates with a global view of the cyber threat environment.

By participating in CCTX cyber threat intelligence and collaboration forums, members will be better prepared to mitigate or eliminate new and evolving cyber threats. They will be stronger not only as individual organizations, but collectively. Today, the private and public sectors do not have a consolidated view of cyber threats impacting the nation. The CCTX aims to meet this need.

The CCTX provides two significant benefits:

  1. Members receive actionable cyber threat intelligence from the Threat Intelligence portal and various reports. This intelligence is based on input from all sectors of the economy. Cyber attackers are sharing their attack techniques across sectors, and CCTX Subscribers are informed about all of these techniques. The contextually-rich data that members receive improves their decision making.
  2. Through CCTX communities, experts from member companies interact with other professionals to solve their cyber problems. This sharing can focus on a single issue, an attack campaign or the latest threats. Best practices, techniques, and insights from a diverse community of professionals are exchanged.

The CCTX is open to all Canadian businesses and organizations legally registered to conduct business in Canada. See more information here.

The CCTX is open to all companies of all sizes and from all sectors across Canada. Organizations interested in joining the CCTX should check out our Membership Benefits and contact us for more information at: info@cctx.ca .

CCTX members gain a focused perspective on cyber threats that could impact their business. They receive advanced mitigation information about cyber events in other business sectors that may migrate to their organization or sector. They collaborate with other cyber security experts in sharing best practices, techniques, and insights. Since cybercrime is global, CCTX members will be doing their part to help protect Canada from cybercrime that is undermining business.

View Our Memberships

The CCTX offers three levels of service to meet the needs of Canadian business of all sizes and means – Member, Associate and Affiliate. Member services provide a comprehensive set of information and participation options to meet the needs of large businesses with more than 5,000 employees. For smaller businesses, five levels of Associate services are available. Business associations are invited to participate as CCTX Affiliates at no cost.

See info about the different Memberships here.

Access is restricted to authorized individuals from each CCTX member organization. No public access is permitted.

Privacy is critical to the success of the CCTX. By providing solutions and services that incorporate internationally recognized Privacy by Design principles, developed by Dr. Ann Cavoukian, the CCTX will address privacy concerns head on. It will routinely monitor the effectiveness of privacy controls and will use a third party to audit operations and validate that privacy is being protected.

To provide a comprehensive Canadian perspective, information used to generate our threat intelligence comes directly from:
  • the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS),
  • curated feeds of threat information,
  • similar threat collaboration organizations,
  • our member organizations,
  • academic research programs, and
  • other trusted sources.

The CCTX is fed anonymized structured and unstructured threat and vulnerability data from members and from government and other curated sources. Threat inputs are triaged, analyzed, processed and distributed to members. This process produces unique contextual information, rendering actionable intelligence that can be shared through message boards, secure e-mail, reports and the CCTX Threat Intelligence portal.

The CCTX is not a Government of Canada initiative. The founding members consulted with Public Safety Canada, the lead agency for Canada’s Cyber Security Strategy, and the Communications Security Establishment on how the CCTX can best work with Government. For more information, contact Public Safety at media@ps-sp.gc.ca or the Communications Security Establishment at media@cse-cst.gc.ca.

The CCTX was the first organization to sign a collaboration agreement with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS).

Information made available by the partnership with the CCCS will be combined with the unique information provided by CCTX members to provide a much broader, contextually-rich feed of data. This combined data is analyzed by CCTX Threat Analysts, producing daily reports to help CCTX members set priorities.

CCTX members can anonymously and voluntarily share their cyber threat intelligence with the CCCS via the CCTX platform. Subscribers have absolute control over whether their information is shared with the CCCS or not.  Subscribers also have the opportunity to comment on the value of the information received from the CCCS and to thereby help make it more useful.

The CCCS brings together:

  • From Public Safety Canada: All functions of the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre (CCIRC) and the Get Cyber Safe public awareness campaign
  • From Shared Services Canada: Some of the functions of the Security Operations Centre
  • From the Communications Security Establishment: the entire IT Security branch

Combining CCCS public sector data with member-contributed CCTX private sector data is a powerful way to generate a unique cross-sector Canadian perspective.

Cyber threat actors—including foreign states, hacktivists, criminals and terrorists—continually probe government systems, looking for vulnerabilities to gain access to a computer system. Every day, thousands of attempts are made to compromise the integrity of government networks.  The CCCS will provide indicators of compromise related to malicious activity seen on government networks.  These are high-confidence indicators, such as IP addresses and domain names, compiled by the CCCS defence team.

CCTX Member services cost $50,000 annually. Fees for Associates vary, depending on the type, and size, of the organization. Business Associations will be able to join as CCTX Affiliates at no cost. See more information here.

The CCTX offers a variety of value-added information sharing and analysis options including cyber alerts, an ability to anonymously submit and receive threat intelligence, threat conference calls, member surveys, membership meetings, and educational events. In addition, members can gain valuable insights and information from others by participating in Communities of Interest and Communities of Trust. These communities are forums for professionals to interact to solve their cyber problems by exchanging best practices, techniques and insights.

 

The CCTX is a not-for-profit organization; the annual fees cover the costs of service delivery and administration.

 
 

Yes. Attendance at CCTX events can be used towards the continuing professional development requirements of several accreditation authorities, including ISC2, ISACA and PMI.

 
 
 

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