At the National Cybersecurity Consortium, people are at the heart of everything we do. Our team works collaboratively in a diverse and inclusive environment to drive positive impact for Canadians through research and development, commercialization, and training in cybersecurity.
Scientific Director Message
With great pleasure and excitement, I begin my position as Scientific Director of Canada’s National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC). NCC is a not-for-profit Consortium of Canadian universities fostering and cultivating world-class cybersecurity-related research, innovation, training, talent development, and entrepreneurship. It aims at keeping Canada’s cyber and critical infrastructures and citizens safe while ensuring Canada’s global competitiveness and leadership in cybersecurity. The NCC takes a cross-sectorial approach with interest in all Canadian critical infrastructure sectors and works to build capacity throughout the entire economic ecosystem. Drawing on the expertise of researchers and practitioners from various disciplines, the NCC helps build theoretical and practical solutions to fundamental problems in a broad range of cybersecurity fields, such as critical infrastructure protection, Human-centric cybersecurity, network security, software security and privacy.
I am thrilled that the Government of Canada has appointed the NCC to lead the Government of Canada’s new Cyber Security Innovation Network (CSIN). NCC will receive up to $80 million over four years towards a potential total project well above $160 million, including significant cash and in-kind contributions from supporting organizations.
By collaborating with various cybersecurity ecosystems nationwide, I believe we will become a major force for advancing cybersecurity innovation in Canada. I look forward to working closely with our colleagues in Industry, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), NCC’s partners and stakeholders, and across the cybersecurity ecosystems group to shape our collective vision for a pan-Canadina cybersecurity consortium to meaningfully advance cybersecurity across all sectors and in all regions of Canada, opening a new chapter of collaborative innovation in Canadian cybersecurity. Together, we can build upon our world-class cybersecurity innovation & research capacity, expertise, and commercialization.
In closing, I thank my colleagues from founding universities (Concordia, Calgary, TMU, Waterloo and UNB), the Government of Canada, and our private and public sector partners for their commitment and support to the future of Canada’s cybersecurity and privacy.
Senior Leadership
Dr. Ali Ghorbani
Scientific Director
Dr. Ghorbani has held various academic positions for the past 41 years. He is a Professor of Computer Science, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity, Scientific Director of the National Cybersecurity Consortium, and founding director of the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity he established in 2016. In addition, he served as the Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick from 2008 to 2017. He has spent over 25 years of his 41-year academic career conducting fundamental and applied research in machine learning, cybersecurity, and Critical Infrastructure Protection.
Dr. Ghorbani is the co-inventor of four awarded, and one filed a patent in Cybersecurity and Web Intelligence. He has published over three hundred peer-reviewed articles during his career. In addition, he has supervised over 250 research associates, postdoctoral fellows, and students. His book, “Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems: Concepts and Techniques,” was published by Springer in October 2010. Dr. Ghorbani developed several technologies adopted by high-tech companies and co-founded three startups, Sentrant Security, EyesOver Technologies, and Cydarien Security, in 2013, 2015, and 2019. Dr. Ghorbani’s role in the success of Q1 Labs Inc. and its QRadar technology has been featured in the book Unicorn in the Woods by Cordon Pitts (2020).
Dr. Ghorbani co-founded the UNB-NRC Cybersecurity Collaboration Consortium and the National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC) in 2019 and 2020, respectively. In addition, he co-founded the Privacy, Security, Trust (PST) Network in Canada and its annual international conference. Dr. Ghorbani served as the co-Editor-in-Chief of “Computational Intelligence: An International Journal” from 2007 to 2017. He is a past vice-president of the Canadian Association of Computer Science (CACS/AIC), served as a CIPS Professional Standards Advisory Council (PSAC) member, and was on NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) Committee on Safety and Security. Currently, he is a member of Statistics Canada’s Advisory Council on Ethics and Modernization of Microdata Access and an associate member of the Digital Technology Supercluster.
Dr. Ghorbani is the recipient of the 2017 Startup Canada Senior Entrepreneur Award and Canadian Immigrant Magazine’s RBC top 25 Canadian immigrants of 2019. In addition, he was named one of the 40 inspiring Canadians in the book Forty Brilliant Canadians and their Vision for the Nation by Mark Bulgutch (2022).
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