Bell Cyber survey pegs small-company preparedness at 22%, Atlantic Canada at 16
Only 35 percent of Canadian employees feel they have received adequate cybersecurity training at work, a figure that falls to 22 percent at small companies and 16 percent in Atlantic Canada.
According to Modern Cybersecurity: Canadian Expectations and Enterprise Responsibilities, a national report from Bell Cyber, 25 percent said they had received some training without feeling fully prepared and 56 percent had sought out cybersecurity informatin on their own, outside formal training.
The survey also recorded workplace behaviours that raise organizational exposure: one in five employees uses the same password across multiple accounts, 15 percent use personal AI tools, rising to 20 percent among millennials, and 14 percent store work files on personal devices or cloud storage.
Seventy-seven percent of Canadians said they were personally targeted by a cyberattack in the past year.
Fifty-seven percent said they would likely stop being a customer of an organization following a data breach involving their personal information, and 38 percent said they have already avoided doing business with a company over cybersecurity concerns.
Fifty-eight percent identified a meaningful gap between the security they need and what organizations currently provide.
Seventy-six percent believe AI is helping criminals create convincing scams faster than organizations can stop them and nearly half said they received a communication in the past year they suspected was generated or altered using AI.
Sixty-three percent said organizations are failing to keep pace with AI-driven threats, and 31 percent are confident Canadian organizations can protect personal information from AI-enabled attacks.
Bell Cyber noted these figures reflect respondents’ perceptions rather than a measurement of organizational security capabilities.
Forty-seven percent said storing data on Canadian servers strengthens their confidence and 40 percent said the same about cybersecurity managed by a Canadian provider.
Asked what would most help build trust against AI-driven threats, respondents ranked clear communication when threats emerge highest at 32 percent, followed by transparency about data protection at 31 percent.
Sixty-five percent said companies that visibly invest in cybersecurity earn more of their trust, and 73 percent support stronger government regulation of cybersecurity practices.
“Cyber threats are now part of the operating environment for Canadian organizations,” John Menezes, president and CEO of Bell Cyber, said in the company release.
Menezes reads the findings as evidence that Canadians weigh cybersecurity when choosing who to do business with, and that detection and response speed determine whether organizations hold that trust.
A separate Canadian Internet Registration Authority survey reported by The Canadian Press this October, found 91 percent said it matters that cyber records are stored and processed in Canada, and four in 10 of the organizations polled experienced a cyberattack in the past year.
Cybersecurity is one of five risk topics in Guideline No. 10, Guideline for Risk Management for Plan Administrators, released by the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities on 2024.
CAPSA set an implementation deadline of January 1 for administrators of defined benefit, defined contribution, pooled registered, target benefit and hybrid plans, regardless of plan size.
