New York boosts cybersecurity

Following the discovery of a breach of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulatory filing system for public companies, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) on Thursday announced the launch of its own cybersecurity review.

There is “no evidence that the CSA’s national systems have been compromised,” the CSA says in its announcement.

The SEC revealed on Wednesday that its national filing system, known as EDGAR, was breached in 2016, providing hackers with access to information that could have been used for illegal insider trading.

Read: SEC reveals hack, possibility info was used for trading

The CSA’s national systems include the Canadian equivalent of EDGAR, known as SEDAR, along with a database for insider filings (SEDI), and registration databases.

While there’s no immediate evidence of a similar breach in Canada, the regulators are nevertheless launching a review to verify that belief.

“We conduct regular reviews of our systems to ensure all necessary protections are in place, and, as an added precaution, will be conducting an additional review in light of the recent developments regarding the SEC,” the CSA Secretariat says in a statement.

The Montreal-based Secretariat, which is the umbrella group’s permanent bureaucracy, notes that the CSA uses, “industry-recognized third-party security services to monitor and protect its national systems and data from malicious activity.”

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