Dragos Inc., vendor of cybersecurity solutions for operational technology (OT) environments, announced on Tuesday that the Dragos Community Defense Program is now available in Canada. The program provides perpetually free access to OT cybersecurity software to Canadian water, electric, and gas providers with under approximately $140M CAN (about US$100 million) in annual revenue that might otherwise struggle to get the cybersecurity resources they need to defend their industrial systems. The offering includes the Dragos Platform and Neighborhood Keeper.
Small utility providers are pillars of critical infrastructure for vital resources like water and electric yet often don’t have the budgets or resources to adequately defend their operational environments from adversaries including hacktivists, ransomware gangs, and state-sponsored threat groups.
Launched in the U.S. in December of 2023, the program has reached across the continent to under-resourced utility providers, and is now available in Canada, thanks in part to a partnership with Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, that allows the free program to scale.
The Dragos Community Defense Program provides qualifying Canadian-based utility providers with under $140M CAN in annual revenue access to:
- Dragos Platform: OT monitoring that provides asset visibility, threat detection, vulnerability management, response playbooks, and digital forensics
- Neighborhood Keeper: Collective defense network with automated analytics updates, anonymized community threat visibility, proactive threat analytics, & Trusted Insight Alerts when issues are discovered
- Access to Dragos Academy: On-demand training and education for OT cyber and use of the Dragos Platform
- Membership in OT-CERT: Access to the Dragos OT-CERT community for incident response support and threat intelligence sharing
“While larger industrial sectors in Canada like energy and manufacturing have been making significant investments in OT cybersecurity, the smaller utilities that provide critical services to their communities struggle to keep up with the changing threat landscape,” said Robert M. Lee, chief executive officer and co-founder of Dragos. “The Community Defense Program is central to Dragos’s mission to safeguard communities and supported by like-minded partners who are enabling the free offering in Canada.”
One such partner is Elastic, which provides Elasticsearch, at no charge to deliver the Dragos Platform to Community Defense members. “We are excited to continue working with Dragos to allow even the smallest providers to benefit from the speed and scale of Elastic to strengthen their OT security and protect the communities they serve,” said Ashutosh Kulkarni, CEO, Elastic.
Dragos works with individuals and organizations across Canada to support the mission of safeguarding communities. For example, VARS Corporation in Montreal, Québec plans to bring the program to qualifying utility providers.
“We are excited about the expansion of the Dragos Community Defense Program,” said Maxime M. Boutin, co-founder, OT Security Leader, VARS Corporation. “This initiative is a game-changer for strengthening industrial cybersecurity across Canada’s critical infrastructure sectors. By providing world-class OT cybersecurity capabilities and intelligence to under-resourced organizations, the program enhances collective defense against cyber threats. This expansion empowers Canadian municipalities, utilities, and other essential services to better protect themselves, ultimately contributing to a more secure and resilient national infrastructure.”
Dragos OT-CERT (OT-Cyber Emergency Readiness Team), provides additional support for participants in the Dragos Community Defense Program. OT-CERT offerings include free how-to guides and demonstration videos, best practices, training, interactive working sessions, tabletop exercises, and webinars to build industrial cybersecurity expertise and address shortages of OT security skills. Dragos has been supporting under-resourced organizations with free resources since 2022 with OT-CERT, which has over 2,400 members in 64 countries.
