News
Sharing the results from Cybera’s community outreach
Cybera recently ran a series of focus groups and surveys with our community, to get their input for our 2022-25 Strategic Roadmap. We are pleased to report the feedback received on Cybera’s services was overwhelmingly positive, with 93% of respondents indicating our services are unique and could not be easily […]
Alberta budget and broadband strategy hold promise, but concerns remain
Last month, Alberta’s Finance Minister Travis Toews tabled the provincial government’s Budget 2022. It builds on a number of commitments outlined in the government’s Alberta Recovery Plan and Alberta 2030: Building Skills for Jobs strategy by introducing a number of investments relevant to advanced education, innovation, and skilled labour development. […]
Lessons learned from our recent outage
On Saturday, February 26, one of our network team’s worst nightmares occurred. A major incident took place during planned maintenance at one of our data centres. Thankfully, this occured on a weekend, our major services were restored the same day, and access was restored to all Cybera services by Monday, […]
Cybera is launching new security services
To meet the security needs of our member community, Cybera will be launching three new cybersecurity services for our wider member community in April 2022: An intrusion detection service that gives connected members a single, detailed overview of potential indicators of compromise on their network, to improve their overall security […]
ALBERTA BROADBAND STRATEGY AIMS TO CLOSE THE DIGITAL DIVIDE BY 2026
Today, Premier Jason Kenney and Service Alberta Minister Nate Glubish released the long-awaited Alberta Broadband Strategy 2022: connecting Albertans, growing the economy. Cybera was pleased to see many of the initiatives we have previously advocated for in the new strategy, which we believe are necessary to create vital connectivity links […]
Cybera cloud helping Alberta school protect student privacy
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Alberta offers several lesson plans to help students protect their privacy on the internet, including one titled “Getting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube: A Lesson on Online Information.” The lesson’s main takeaway is that, once something is put online, it’s almost impossible […]
HackED Beta gives tech “newbs” a chance to try out a hackathon
This past November, the University of Alberta’s Computer Engineering Club held its fifth annual HackED Beta — “Alberta’s friendliest beginner hackathon,” of which Cybera was a proud sponsor. The 24-hour coding competition is geared towards beginner programmers who are either in high school or the first two years of post-secondary […]
Rapid Access Cloud user profile: PinterEC explores remote video capture
Periodically, we like to chat with one of Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud users, to find out what fun and innovative projects they’re exploring on our cloud. In this post, we talked to Chris Pinter, CEO of PinterEC Technology Projects, a research and development firm that works with companies to build […]
Data science fellowship helps companies and emerging data scientists flourish
Last August, Cybera’s Data Science For Albertans (DSFA) team wrapped up its 2021 industry fellowship. This was the third year we offered the program, which provides an opportunity for emerging data scientists to get real-world experience, while assisting local organizations along their data science adoption journey. Five industry partners, from […]
Summer hackathon highlights Alberta’s neuroscience skills
Many people may not be aware of this, but Alberta is a global leader in neuroscience — the study of the brain and brain behaviour — and, increasingly, the development of neurotechnologies, i.e. the practical applications of this science. One organization that is aware of this fact, and is doing […]
Cybera newsletter — Fall 2021
Cyber Summit is just days away! The annual Cyber Summit will run November 8-10. The conference will kick-off with two half-day workshops: an immersive workshop from Softchoice and AWS on leading your educational institution through its cloud journey, followed by a look at how higher education is implementing Multi-Factor Authentication. […]
Alberta’s public shared procurement program surpasses $30M in savings as more security offerings added
Alberta’s ShareIT public procurement program has passed the spend milestone of $50 million since it was implemented in 2017. This equates to a total estimated savings for its members of +$30 million (over their average education discount rate). This milestone comes as the program adds a variety of new firewall […]
Network use jumps in 2021-22 school year
It’s hard to believe, but students are now in their third year of schooling while dealing with COVID-19. During each year – and each interruption – Cybera has seen wildly different network traffic patterns. While I do plan to write about our experience as a whole, I’ll save that for […]
Canada’s NREN bolsters security with MANRS
The partners in Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN) are pleased to announce today that Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, or MANRS, has been implemented on the majority of Canada’s research and education networks. Ninety-nine per cent of organizations connected to the NREN are now connected to a MANRS-compliant […]
SniffPass boosts US infrastructure cybersecurity
Last year, we wrote about a novel security tool that Cybera’s security team had made open source. The “plaintext password sniffer,” or SniffPass, was first developed by the University of Alberta’s security team to detect and secure their institution against phishing attempts or insecure online passwords. Cybera’s security analyst made […]