Really, when we're talking about a billion malicious actions, we're talking about the gamut, all the way from people poking at our systems, looking to see where they're vulnerable, up to people trying to compromise or install malicious software called malware, or basically exploit any vulnerability that exists. It's a wide range of activities, but what we're trying to do is counter the full range, no matter where it originates. We want to counter any malicious activity that's coming at the Government of Canada, and the number is astonishing. I think that's really where we are going into a few different areas. Number one is making it better. How do we work to make the systems that we have more defendable? That's working with the commercial sector, and that's being able to share more information, being able to share some of our tools and techniques, and pushing it forward.
We've shared some of our tools publicly. We have a system called Assemblyline which we have made open-source and publicly available to anybody who could leverage that. That's how we, for example, defend the government and look at millions of malicious files a day.
The second piece is providing that level of defence that fills the gap between the best available commercial and the state-of-the-art threat activity that we're facing today. Bill C-59 would allow us to then use that on critical systems of importance, as designated by the minister, but also with the informed consent of the system's owners. Informed consent is something that's particularly important in this case.
The third piece is general information sharing, whether that is providing advice and guidance or being able to share what we're seeing, what's going on, and very much clarifying our authorities to share information.
That's where we kind of layer all these things together and start to deal with those billion events.