Scotiabank is to fund a $2 million cybersecurity and financial risk initiative at the University of British Columbia.
Applicable over the next five years, the cash will be used to support internships, speaker series, hackathons, and other collaborative events to advance understanding of the impacts of cyberattacks and refine risk management tools.
Michael Zerbs , chief technology officer, Scotiabank, says: "Data theft costs organisations billions of dollars a year worldwide, and cause psychological and social harm for individual customers. The Scotiabank Cybersecurity and Risk Analytics Initiative at UBC will advance the industry's collective understanding of how to further protect digital assets."
Scotiabank's donation will support ongoing work led by UBC researchers Konstantin Beznosov and Hasan Cavusoglu, on the human, social and economic issues concerning privacy and security; and statistics professors John Braun , Natalia Nolde and Harry Joe, who are making contributions to financial risk modeling and probability theory.
The donation will also be used to help entrepreneurs grow their ideas at the Creative Destruction Lab West (CDL West) at the UBC Sauder School of Business, an extension of the Scotiabank-supported lab at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.