Kyndryl, billed as the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider, officially opened its security operations centre (SOC) in south Barrie on Thursday.
Located at 505 Bayview Dr., the firm calls the facility “the first SOC in Canada and the U.S., and a critical addition to the city of Barrie’s diverse economy and burgeoning innovation sector.”
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held May 9.
Kyndryl services thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. The company designs, builds, manages and modernizes complex, mission-critical information systems the world depends on every day.
In attendance were Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall, Todd McCarthy, Ontario’s minister of public and business service delivery, and Kyndryl Canada president Farhaz Thobani.
The new SOC will operate 24 hours per day and will use artificial intelligence, machine learning and integrated automation systems to track cyber-threats, protect mission-critical infrastructure, and provide real-time incident response for the entire life cycle of cyber-threats.
Standing in a large, highly secure operations room, which wouldn’t look out of place at NASA, with a global map on a giant screen and technicians sitting at computers, Nuttall and Denis Villeneuve, Kyndryl Canada’s security and resilience practice leader, discussed the city’s cyber-security concerns.
“We made a significant investment in Barrie, both with hiring and growing the scale of cybersecurity individuals and IT in Barrie,” Villeneuve told BarrieToday after the event.
“It’s not a question of if; it’s when,” he noted in regard to hackers and ransomware attacks. “It’s better to be proactive and figure that out. In the case of incidents, we definitely have capabilities in recovery and investigations for our clients.”
Nuttall said the SOC is a welcome addition to Barrie.
“This is huge for the city in terms of job creation, in terms of showing what the opportunities are for industry here in the city of Barrie,” he said.
“When you think of jobs of the future, these just fit right in, with skilled individuals who are protecting critical infrastructure, protecting businesses and individuals, and protecting the tenets of democracy here in Canada," the mayor added.
According to Kyndryl, Canadian organizations experience at least one cyber-incident every month and, globally, less than a quarter of companies report having enough in-house expertise to handle cyber-recovery without outside assistance.
Many organizations rely on SOCs to protect their IT operations from threats, and to maintain cyber-resilience.
“Kyndryl’s cyber-defence hub, while based in Barrie, will leverage the infrastructure of Kyndryl’s global network of SOCs, a network of more than 7,500 cybersecurity experts,” the company said in a news release about the Barrie event.
