Canada’s federal agencies ill-equipped to fight cybercrime, auditor finds

In a report Tuesday, Auditor General Karen Hogan describes breakdowns in response, co-ordination, enforcement, tracking, and analysis between and across the organizations.

Three key agencies lacked the “capacity and tools” to effectively protect Canadians from cyberattacks and tackle the growing threat of online crime, the federal spending watchdog has found.

In a report Tuesday, Auditor General Karen Hogan describes breakdowns in response, co-ordination, enforcement, tracking, and analysis between and across the organizations.

Hogan’s review looked at the RCMP, the Communications Security Establishment cyberspy agency and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

She found people were left to figure out where to make a cybercrime report, and might even have been asked to report the same incident to another organization.

For instance, after learning of an offer to sell child sexual exploitation material, the CRTC did not refer the matter to law enforcement but rather told the complainant to contact police directly.

The auditor also says the RCMP has struggled to staff its cybercrime investigative teams, with almost one-third of positions vacant as of January.

In 2022, victims of fraud reported a total of $531 million in financial losses to the RCMP’s Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, the report notes. Three quarters of these reports involved cybercrime.

However, only five to 10 per cent of cybercrimes are reported. “Without prompt action, financial and personal information losses will only grow as the volume of cybercrime and attacks continues to increase.”