Finance Committee on Feb. 27th, 2014

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Has our financial consumer protection agency been into that as well?

[Lucie M.A. Tedesco]

That is one of the risks we raised in our paper. The risks are fraud, misuse, identity theft, and misuse of assets. It's something that's really not within our purview, but we'll be following it.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

In whose purview is it?

[Lucie M.A. Tedesco]

That's a good question.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Somebody has to be thinking about that for our citizens.

[Darren Hannah]

If I may suggest, you might want to talk to the institute for advanced computing near the University of Waterloo. They are the leaders in this technology. They could probably give you a sense.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I know they are, but they're not a government institute. Whose purview is it within under the government?

[Lucie M.A. Tedesco]

I don't know.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Chairman, do you know?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Usually I just moderate the discussion. I'm only supposed to answer procedural questions.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I understand that, Mr. Chairman. That wasn't fair. Perhaps it's something the committee may want to consider.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I think I know the answer to that, but I'll endeavour to get that for everyone.

[A voice]

Google it.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Just google it.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

No. I yahoo; I don't google.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

I have Mr. Keddy for the final round, please.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Chairman, you actually asked the question I was going to ask, but my colleague Mr. Saxton has a different question.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

It's actually along similar lines to Mr. Bélanger's questions for Mr. Cumming regarding security.

Your system is based on a cloud network, or whatever you call it. There seems to be a lot of apprehension among people still today about where that information goes, where that information is stored, whether or not it could be hacked. We've seen a lot of hacking activity coming from Asia, for example.

What can you tell people to give them more confidence that a cloud-based system is safe and secure?

[Hugh Cumming]

Part of it is that the world has sort of shifted from closed networks where security was very tight to these open networks that are highly interconnected, and that has created a lot of complexity. From a user perspective, I think keeping your organization and organizations that you've established trust with safe is first and foremost the best way to protect that data. People need to be conscious of how they use their data across the Internet. When you send your data to Joe's Flowers, it's not the same as storing it at TD Bank.

When you think about a cloud, the organizations like ours, that have invested in providing security infrastructure through a cloud, spend a lot more time thinking about how to protect that data than do the small independent businesses that also store the same kind of sensitive information.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

I believe there have been some large retailers that have been hacked, even recently.

[Hugh Cumming]

For sure.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

That sort of goes counter to your argument about small versus large. Large isn't always better. Bigger isn't always better.

[Hugh Cumming]

It certainly isn't their area of expertise in all cases. I think the Target experience says that it just simply isn't their area of expertise and they're looking at organizations that have addressed the issue for different ways of handling payment data.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

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