IT World Canada strikes partnership with Canadian Cybersecurity Network

Two of Canada’s biggest cybersecurity news and events providers have struck a partnership to better serve infosec pros.

IT World Canada (ITWC), whose four news sites and two podcasts are seen and heard around the world, is partnering with the Canadian Cybersecurity Network (CCN), which runs a mentoring program and job portal for infosec pros — CanadianCybersecurityJobs.com — as well as hosting cybersecurity webinars and offering a speaker search capability for firms that want to run their own events.

“ITWC has a huge security audience,” said IT World Canada publisher Jim Love. “We have almost a million ad impressions that we can deliver on articles and newsletters related to security each month. Our Cyber Security Today podcast reaches almost 10,000 people per episode and is consistently rated in the top 10 technology podcasts in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.. The CCN partnership extends that reach even further.”

“This partnership is also going to have a great impact on MapleSEC, our cross-Canada online security event,” he noted. “MapleSEC’s annual event and its quarterly Satellite Series are the only security events that serve a national Canadian audience.”

“The Canadian Cybersecurity Network has a membership of almost 37,000 people from across Canada,” added network founder Francois Guay. “That is now extended to include the reach of IT World Canada. This allows us to do bigger programs and serve our community better.”

The reach of this partnership will extend beyond MapleSEC, Love said. “We hope that this will also boost the reach of our events that aim to bring more people into cybersecurity careers, such as our Women in Cybersecurity event. And it will reach into other events like Technicity, which celebrates the municipal and government sector. That event will be further enhanced by the data from CyberTowns.”

CyberTowns is an annual program, developed by Guay, aimed at identifying the best communities for people with a cybersecurity/IT-related career. Winning communities will be determined by an online survey of CCN members plus those viewing ITWC’s publications. The report will merge that data with key available statistical information from cities across Canada. Initially, Guay said, it will deal with cities of over 100,000.

The two organizations will also soon launch a joint program: a forum tentatively called CyberVoices, where leading cybersecurity professionals will meet and issue regular strategic and operational cybersecurity advice to Canadian businesses, governments and individuals.

For Love, the announcement has a special and bittersweet component. “I only wish that former ITWC leader Fawn Annan, who passed away last year, was here to see this,” said Love.

“For years, Fawn and I had been dismayed at the way we tend to fracture and divide an already small tech community in Canada. In a small country, fracturing the audience just makes it harder to deal with the overwhelming competition from U.S. groups and publications. Fawn was passionate about reversing that. She was instrumental in building a number of partnerships, with the CIO Association of Canada (CIOCAN), for example. CIOCAN also has a CISO membership and the first thing that we did was to reach out to them.”

Guay agreed, saying, “It’s why our motto for CCN is ‘Stronger Together’.”

For more information on either of these organizations, or opportunities for sponsorship, contact Ray Christophersen of ITWC and Francois Guay of CCN

ITWC’s news sites include IT World Canada, ITBusiness.ca, Channel Daily News and the French language Direction Informatique. Its podcasts include Cyber Security Today and Hashtag Trending. It reaches hundreds of thousands of professionals across Canada through its podcasts, publications, and events on cybersecurity and IT. These include the quarterly MapleSEC webinars, Technicity, the annual Top Women in Cybersecurity awards, the CDN Top 100 and the CDN Channel Innovation Awards and the Women in the IT Channel event.