Canada’s private companies must strengthen cybersecurity in the face of volatility

Canada’s private businesses must prioritize cybersecurity to navigate rising threats and protect critical assets in a volatile market.

In brief

• Private businesses wrestling with an onslaught of macroeconomic and geopolitical forces should not abandon their cybersecurity efforts.
• In fact, unpredictable markets can increase cyber risk, reinforcing the need to double down on cybersecurity.
• Taking an integrated “assess, protect, respond” approach can help Canada’s private companies safeguard financial and nonfinancial assets while carving out a competitive advantage.

Canada’s private companies may feel swamped with competing priorities in this volatile business environment. Some of those challenges could very well represent existential threats, requiring organizational, supply chain, workforce or other changes. However, keeping cybersecurity in the priority mix is essential right now.

Using a continuous and integrated approach to assess, protect and respond to cyber threats makes proactive risk management feasible and more effective. Approaching it in this way also helps weave this priority into your organization’s cultural fabric. Doing so is especially critical in a world where unpredictable situations and markets can drive up cybersecurity risks and related costs.

Why should private companies stay focused on cybersecurity in 2025?

Even a relatively small breach in the industrial sector costs a private business, on average, nearly $6 million.^₁ Larger breaches — in which 50 million to 60 million records are violated — drive the average bottom-line cost for businesses in all sectors up to $375 million.² By contrast, research shows that proactively using modern technologies to mitigate risk can reduce those costs by millions of dollars.³

For private companies in Canada, this underscores the importance of preventative cyber risk management. You wouldn’t renovate a home without first upgrading a poor foundation or failing roof. Similar thinking applies here.

Companies across Canada and around the world face a vast range of threats: from internal threats — think data theft, accidental data breaches, credential misuse or policy violations — to external forces — along the lines of phishing schemes, ransomware and denial-of-service attacks — and a range of new threats emerging every day.

Furthermore, one recent EY survey indicated 44% of organizations in Canada experienced a cyberattack in the past year.

Rather than slowing down, these threats are amplified during times of uncertainty. Creating shared, in addition to cross-department, ownership of cybersecurity as part of your normal course of business can bolster defences and protect financials. Doing so also safeguards other valuable business assets, including private employee information, innovative intellectual property and potential customer trust.

1. Assess current security measures to spot vulnerabilities and potential threats to your system.

Working through an initial assessment, or updating one done a few years ago, helps align cybersecurity strategies with your business goals. This kind of foundational work also surfaces actionable insights you can then properly prioritize through targeted investments.

EY has robust methods to offer private companies a big-picture view of their threat landscape. We use a proven and scalable methodology to lay out your risk profile across four primary pillars: data protection and privacy; identity and access management; security architecture and engineering; and security operations.

Cybersecurity assessments like this allow you to evaluate current security measures against business and industry risks. This is how you identify vulnerabilities and think bigger, even increasing the chances your business complies with industry standards. Assessments also provide insights for future strategy planning, helping you prioritize security investments and allocate resources effectively, while aligning with your industry peers. Assessments allow businesses to better protect critical infrastructure and data. All of this weaves cybersecurity into broader business strategies and goals, fostering uptake at the cultural level.

At the assessment stage, and then on a continuing basis, you’ll want to:

• Outline current and desired maturity profiles aligned with specific business and industry risks.
• Carry out a current-state evaluation aligned to leading practices and standards, incorporating a historical maturity analysis, where possible.
• Consider roadmapping your cyber strategy and future state based on your risk appetite and business conditions.

2. Protect the business using a multilayered approach.

Help Empowering your private business with a cybersecurity assessment tees you up to act wisely, strengthening defences across the organization. That could include improving front-end user (end-point security); internal and external networks, services and application security; and database security.

Drawing on insights from your assessment, you’ll want to focus on building cybersecurity awareness across internal teams. The more people understand about your business’s specific cybersecurity risks, the better they can appreciate them and prepare to protect themselves — and in turn the organization — from a potential breach.

In this sense, proactively focusing on people, process and technology to manage cybersecurity risks helps you identify threats before they shake up the business. Similarly, you can then develop more robust incident response plans and continuously improve defences in light of new and emerging cyber threats.

At the protection stage and then on a continuing basis, you’ll want to:

• Train your people on the skills necessary to prevent unauthorized access and reduce the risk of data breaches.
• Create and communicate clear processes so people know how to protect assets and maintain operations should a cyberattack occur. This helps significantly reduce disruption and speeds up recovery processes during a potential crisis.
• Implement the right technology and behavioural safeguards to support compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, helping your private business avoid fines or legal issues, protect your brand and, potentially, differentiate yourself from competitors and drive new revenue opportunities.

3. Prepare to respond to and recover from cyberattacks.

Breaches happen. The important thing is that you see them coming and remain ready to respond. When you’ve planned for the worst-case scenario, you’re better positioned to address a breach efficiently. This saves costs, limits damage and helps you get back to business faster.

With an assess, protect and respond approach, you can channel the insight gleaned at every stage to make sure your response plan is tailored specifically to the kinds of risks your business is most likely to face.

For example, technologies that were once in the emerging stage— think AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G — are gaining traction with Canadian organizations, bringing both opportunities and vulnerabilities.

In recent years, cybercriminals have increasingly exploited these weaknesses. Empowered by AI, machine learning (ML) and automation, cybercriminals are escalating attacks for profit, disruption and political influence, posing complex risks to security, supply chains and data. Ransomware has also grown in scope and complexity, particularly targeting critical infrastructure.

Focusing the organization’s assess, protect, respond approach on what’s happening now and what’s coming next gives you time to carry out simulation exercises that replicate real-world cyber incidents. Addressing cybersecurity in this way also empowers you to establish dedicated incident response teams, keep response plans current and implement ongoing monitoring and logging.

Taken together, these capabilities can significantly reduce the costs associated with cyber incidents, help you maintain business operations even during cyberattacks and embrace leading practices and strategies to meet legal and regulatory requirements.

At the respond stage and then on a continuing basis, you’ll want to:

• Create and regularly update incident response plans to effectively handle and recover from cyber threats.
• Monitor systems on a continuous basis to detect cyber threats early and respond quickly.
• Provide teams with opportunities to practise response plans, improve coordination, identify weaknesses and enhance cyber resilience overall.

Summary

As market volatility grows, so does cyber risk. Canada’s private businesses should embrace a connected assess, protect, respond strategy to battle existing and emerging cyber risks in the face of broader uncertainty.