Government Cybersecurity Showcase Alberta

In stable times, good governance goes unnoticed. But these are not stable times. Technologies and risks are emerging daily, impacting our workplaces, communities, and homes. Your constituents look to you to lead and protect so they can seize new opportunities. What does it take to answer their call?

AI is changing the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyber threats — and reactive defense is no longer enough. As attackers use AI for reconnaissance, phishing, adaptive malware, and faster exploitation, public sector organizations need to shift from waiting for alerts to proactively hunting, detecting, and containing threats before they escalate.

This keynote explores what “aggressive defense” means for government: not hack-back or overreach, but a more proactive, AI-assisted security posture built on visibility, predictive threat intelligence, automated triage, exposure management, and human-led decision-making. This session will outline how public sector teams can use AI to reduce noise, prioritize real risk, and move at machine speed while keeping accountability, governance, and human judgment at the centre.

• Understand how AI is changing the threat landscape for government services, legacy systems, and unmanaged attack surfaces
• Reframe cyber defense from reactive response to proactive threat hunting and exposure management
• Explore how AI can support anomaly detection, predictive intelligence, automated triage, and deception strategies
• Balance AI-enabled speed with human-in-the-loop governance for high-impact decisions
• Identify one practical next step public sector organizations can take this month to strengthen AI-assisted cyber readiness

Preparing for the quantum threat to current encryption means laying the groundwork now, before cryptographic upgrades become urgent and costly. This session will show you practical, low-effort steps to prepare for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), helping your agency reduce future migration costs while protecting sensitive data and essential services.

• Identify where your systems rely on cryptography so you can understand the scope of future upgrades.
• Prioritize preparation for sensitive, long-lived data and systems that will take the longest to transition.
• Reduce future rework by building cryptographic flexibility into routine technology upgrades and procurement decisions.
• Engage suppliers and public sector peers early to clarify dependencies, share lessons, and make migration planning easier.

Alberta Public sector employees are increasingly adopting generative AI, AI bots and third-party SaaS tools to streamline administrative tasks and increase efficiency. However, this must be carefully managed to preserve citizen trust that their data is being protected and stored in compliance with privacy and industry regulations.   This discussion will describe the steps necessary to establish a framework and standards for secure and transparent AI adoption while maintaining public trust.

As governments modernize services and move more operations online, cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern — it’s a core element of public trust. From safeguarding citizen data to protecting critical infrastructure, the public sector faces an evolving threat landscape that demands collaboration, agility, and foresight.

This keynote explores how leading government organizations are strengthening resilience, modernizing systems, and fostering a culture of security-first innovation. Learn how to align policy, technology, and people to protect public value in an increasingly digital world.

• Understand emerging cyber threats and what they mean for government operations.
• Explore strategies for building resilience into digital transformation initiatives.
• Learn how to strengthen security culture across teams and departments.
• See how data protection and transparency drive citizen trust and confidence.
• Discover actionable steps for cross-sector collaboration to safeguard digital government ecosystems.

Cybersecurity is a shared problem, but most institutions have been trying to solve it alone. When all post-secondary CIOs in Alberta voted unanimously to stand up a shared rSOC, they made a different bet: that pooling resources, threat intelligence, and 24/7 coverage would give each institution a level of protection they had been trying to manage independently.
This session will take you inside the rSOC from concept to operations so you can understand what community-driven cybersecurity infrastructure actually looks like, what it requires to build, and what the lessons learned mean for your sector.

Government agencies are trapped between rising technical debt and the operational risk of modernizing critical systems that cannot fail. This panel will explore how leaders are using AI-powered code translation, incremental migration strategies, and rigorous testing to modernize safely so you can reduce debt, improve security, and free capacity for innovation without service disruption.

• Prioritize modernization using risk-based assessments that weigh security vulnerabilities, vendor support timelines, and operational criticality
• Apply AI-assisted code translation with human-in-the-loop validation, automated testing suites, and rollback plans to minimize migration risk
• Adopt incremental migration strategies including strangler patterns, API-first architectures, and parallel run periods that enable safe, staged cutover
• Embed cybersecurity by design throughout modernization with zero-trust principles, continuous audits, and quantum-resistant cryptography for long-lived systems
• Measure and publish outcomes including cost savings, time-to-delivery improvements, and security posture enhancements to build stakeholder confidence

If cybersecurity feels like Déjà vu… you’re not wrong. We keep having the same conversations, just with different language and louder urgency. This talk isn’t about new ideas or the latest trends. It’s about something more uncomfortable: we already know what to do, and we’re still not doing it. A practical and human look at why that gap exists, and what it takes to finally move past it.

Roundtable 1:

From Discovery to Delivery: Unlocking Government Data with AI

Facilitated by Michael Dunham, Principal Architect, AI, Long View Systems

Roundtable 2:

Who’s Driving? Governing and Securing Agentic AI in Government

Facilitated by Victor Mendoza – Principal Solutions Architect, Thales

Roundtable 3:

Shadow AI: Managing the Risk of Ungoverned Tools in Government

Facilitated by Serge Charette, Director, Solution Engineering, Tanium

Roundtable 4:

From Doing to Building: How can cyber teams shift from defending to building AI systems that defend?

Facilitated by Brad Edwards, Domain Consultant, Security Operations, Palo Alto

Roundtable 5:

Built in Canada, Secured Where? AI sovereignty and the security behind it

Facilitated by Tim Wostradowski, Principal Security Strategist, Fortinet

A decade ago, organizations prioritized productivity and convenience over cybersecurity, creating mistakes we’re still battling today. Now, as AI adoption accelerates at unprecedented speed, history threatens to repeat itself, only this time, the stakes are higher and the consequences could unfold at machine speed.

In this thought-provoking keynote, Fortinet challenges organizations to rethink the trade-offs between innovation and security. Discover the lessons we failed to learn, the critical safeguards we're overlooking today, and the practical, common-sense principles that can help government organizations embrace AI confidently without compromising security.

AI is changing both sides of Alberta’s cybersecurity equation: how public services are delivered, and how threat actors exploit systems, people, and trust. The core risks and threats may not be new, but AI is accelerating their speed, scale, and operational impact. For public sector AI, cyber, and risk leaders, the challenge is not simply identifying new controls, it is making sure governance, procurement, project approvals, funding, and risk management processes can move quickly enough to support responsible AI adoption without slowing innovation to a halt.

This panel explores what it means to build an AI-ready cybersecurity posture for Alberta’s public sector; one that supports innovation while protecting citizens, services, and critical infrastructure. Bringing together cybersecurity, AI safety, and trust perspectives, panelists will examine where existing controls, RFP processes, and project gates are helping manage risk, where 12–18 month timelines create exposure, and what teams can prepare now so the right safeguards and accountability are ready when AI projects move from idea to implementation.

• Define what “AI-ready” means for public sector cybersecurity, responsible AI adoption, and digital trust
• Maintain public trust through clear accountability and appropriate human oversight as services become more automated and intelligent
• Prepare for AI-enabled threats, including fraud, social engineering, disinformation, and automated attacks
• Align cyber controls, AI governance, and procurement processes, identifying safeguards that can be pre-designed or built into RFPs before implementation pressure hits
• Build workforce capability and shared risk ownership across cybersecurity, privacy, data, AI, and digital teams to assess and respond to AI-related security and safety risks