Trust as the New Cybersecurity Currency: François Guay's National Movement
When François Guay quietly launched the Canadian Cybersecurity Network (CCN), there was no grand announcement or media fanfare. Instead, there was persistent dedication and unwavering belief in a simple principle: cybersecurity isn't primarily about technical tools, but about cultivating trust at every moment of action.
The Humble Beginnings of a National Movement
"In the first year or so, the community might have grown to about 1,200 people, if I remember correctly. Every single one added manually," Guay recalls. "I spent hours each day on LinkedIn adding people one by one, writing to them personally, responding, giving feedback, listening. Friends and family thought I was a little crazy, but I believed if we built the right community, with the right people, it could genuinely make a difference in Canada."
This painstaking, person-by-person approach formed the foundation of what would become Canada's largest digital community focused on cybersecurity. Today, CCN connects talent, businesses, educators, and public institutions across the nation, translating practitioner-led cybersecurity insights into human-centered features that reach national and global media.
From Fragmentation to Fellowship
Guay's founding insight was remarkably straightforward. Canada already possessed strong technology and talented professionals, but what was missing was meaningful connection between different sectors.
"I remember sitting in different rooms, practitioners in one, vendors in another, public sector leaders in another, hearing the same concerns framed in slightly different language," he explains. "That fragmentation wasn't malicious. It was structural."
Guay made a defining choice early in CCN's development: human connection would come first. "I would only work with kind people. Not passive people. Not easy people. People who act with integrity under pressure," he states. This principle shaped everything from community moderation to recognition systems and reporting mechanisms, creating a space designed to be trusted rather than simply loud.
Why Trust Has Become the Critical Currency
As we move through 2026, Guay emphasizes one crucial theme for leaders to understand: trust has fundamentally become the new currency in cybersecurity. The proliferation of deepfakes, voice cloning, and convincingly crafted messages has eroded traditional authenticity signals like familiar faces on video, known voices on calls, or established email patterns.
"Canada is not unsafe," Guay clarifies with steady assurance. "Our systems are not collapsing. But we are becoming quietly dependent on platforms we do not control, on systems that evolve faster than we can govern, on delegated authority we no longer fully see."
He notes that most modern security incidents don't actually break systems. "They use systems exactly as designed, just by the wrong actor or under the wrong assumptions." This reality makes the moment of decision—when someone must determine whether to trust an instruction enough to act on it immediately—the most critical security juncture.
Building Practical Pathways Forward
Today, the Canadian Cybersecurity Network brings professionals into meaningful conversation through community learning initiatives, a national jobs platform, and accessible reporting that helps the broader market advance. All these efforts are oriented toward creating practical pathways into the cybersecurity field and fostering better security habits across organizations.
Guay's vision remains consistent: cybersecurity is fundamentally a trust discipline rather than merely a technical one. CCN was created to serve as connective tissue between disparate sectors, not just another platform but a genuine space where trust can be cultivated through daily practice and human-centered interaction.
The network's growth from those initial 1,200 manually-added members to Canada's largest cybersecurity community demonstrates that when trust becomes the foundational currency, meaningful protection follows naturally through verified decisions and human-centered practices.
