Canada in global top 10 for cyber breaches, report finds amid health hack

On e-security, Canada ranked 37th globally. This is the same ranking as the one it got last year, but Canada has slipped 10 positions since the 2021 index.

An annual index ranking countries’ digital well-being shows Canada has work to do in shoring up its cybersecurity.

According to the report by the VPN service Surfshark, which was released earlier this month, Canada ranks 10th in breach count globally, with more than 207.4 million compromised accounts since 2004.

Surfshark’s annual Digital Quality of Life index ranks 121 countries on five core pillars – internet quality, internet affordability, e-infrastructure, e-government and e-security.

On e-security, Canada ranked 37th globally. This is the same ranking it got last year, but Canada has slipped 10 positions since the 2021 index. While concerns around e-security remain high in Canada, it outperformed both the United States (43rd) and Australia (41st) in this year’s rankings.

From government sites to large retailers, cyberattacks impact every corner of the country and our lives.

The index was released shortly before the Better Outcomes Registry and Network (BORN) in Ontario announced that around 3.4 million people who sought pregnancy care and advice in Ontario between January 2010 and May 2023 were affected by a cybersecurity breach.

BORN was made aware of the breach on May 31, after which it posted a public notice on its website and informed the Ontario Provincial Police and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. On Monday, the agency gave more details about the kind of data that was leaked.

The statement said that during the breach, unauthorized copies of files containing the personal health information of approximately 3.4 million people were taken from BORN’s systems.