Aerospace & Defence

ITAR, NIST 800-171, and CMMC compliance — protecting intellectual property, controlled unclassified information, and supply chain integrity with Canadian-based operations.

Industry Challenges

The regulatory landscape is equally demanding. Organizations handling controlled goods must comply with Canada’s Controlled Goods Program (CGP) and the Defence Production Act. Those working with U.S. Department of Defense supply chains face ITAR restrictions, NIST SP 800-171 requirements for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), and the emerging Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) has repeatedly issued alerts about targeted campaigns against Canadian A&D contractors — and the expectation from prime contractors and government clients alike is that your cybersecurity posture is verifiable, not aspirational.

Canada’s aerospace and defense sector is a high-value target for nation-state threat actors and advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. The intellectual property housed in Canadian A&D firms — avionics designs, propulsion systems, satellite communications, radar technology, and classified subcontract deliverables — represents billions in R&D investment. A single successful exfiltration can eliminate a competitive advantage that took decades to build.

Cost of Breach

300%

increase in state-sponsored attacks targeting Canadian A&D contractors.

$4.7M

average cost per IP theft incident in aerospace.

Nation-State Threat Actors Don’t Send Invoices — They Send APTs.

Act Now

The question isn’t whether your institution can afford cybersecurity. It’s whether your clients can afford to trust you without it.

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or Call (437) 747-0878

How we Protect Aerospace & Defense Organizations

MDR & SOC

Nation-state APTs and insider threats don’t trigger commodity antivirus alerts. Our SOC monitors A&D environments 24/7 with detection rules tuned for advanced threats: low-and-slow lateral movement, living-off-the-land techniques, anomalous access to controlled technical data, bulk engineering file downloads, and data staging toward exfiltration points. When a cleared engineer or compromised contractor starts behaving like a threat, we surface it before the IP leaves your network.

Network Security

Controlled Unclassified Information, ITAR-restricted technical data, engineering systems, corporate networks, and visitor access each require strict isolation. We implement segmentation architectures that meet NIST 800-171 boundary protection requirements and CGP expectations — ensuring a compromised corporate workstation cannot reach systems containing export-restricted designs or controlled technical data packages.

Virtual CISO

CMMC Level 2, NIST 800-171, ITAR, and Canada’s Controlled Goods Program each demand formal security governance — not just controls, but documented plans, policies, and accountability. Our VCISO conducts gap analyses against all 110 NIST 800-171 practices, builds your System Security Plan and POA&M, prepares you for CMMC assessments, and ensures your CGP security plan meets PWGSC requirements. When a prime contractor’s security questionnaire arrives, you have documented answers.

Penetration Testing

CMMC assessors and prime contractors expect evidence that your defences have been tested — not just configured. We conduct adversarial penetration testing of A&D environments: testing access controls on CUI repositories, attempting lateral movement from corporate to controlled segments, and simulating the specific TTPs that nation-state actors use against Canadian defence contractors. Results map directly to NIST 800-171 control gaps.

How a Third-Party File Transfer Tool Exposed Canadian Aerospace IP to the Dark Web

The attackers never breached Bombardier’s own network. They exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Accellion’s legacy file transfer tool — a third-party product that Bombardier relied on to move sensitive files.