In the fall of 2024, Cybera reached out to its member community to gain feedback on how we should be shaping our services and technical focus. The message we heard was clear: with the digital landscape evolving at a head-spinning rate, institution’s priorities are focused on cybersecurity, cost efficiency, network connectivity, and robust data governance.
To tackle these priorities, we adapted our traditional pillars (Connect, Enable, Secure, Share, Advocate) to focus on four key priorities in our 2025-28 Strategic Roadmap:
- collaborate to grow shared knowledge
- deliver member-needed services
- advocate for our community
- protect and secure Alberta’s valuable research and data
Now, one year into Cybera’s roadmap, we’re checking in to show you how this plan is coming to life.
1. Collaborating to grow shared knowledge
Building a trusted community of practice and knowledge sharing has become the heart of our mission. This year, we broke down provincial, and even international, barriers in order to cross-share expertise.
Expanding outside our provincial boundaries
Cybera and SRNET’s collaborative Alberta-Saskatchewan ShareIT pilot successfully completed its second year, with dozens of institutions in our neighbouring province joining and benefiting from our shared procurement program. Cybera is also working with BCNET to open reciprocal access to shared IT agreements, ensuring members can also access great benefits and services, regardless of which side of the border they sit on.
Going global
We finalized a landmark partnership with Australia’s national research and education network (AARNet) to operate a shared Security Operations Centre, bringing global network and security support to our local sector.
Bringing folks together to learn
We’ve launched new communities of practice to focus on virtual firewall and open-source tools, promoting the sharing of best practices across the province.
We assisted CUCCIO with expanding access to their special interest groups to every Canadian college and polytechnic.
2. Delivering services that scale
Our goal is to provide the backbone services that make our members’ daily operations run smoother and be more cost-effective.
Improving connectivity
Cybera’s network team established a new data centre connection, providing members with easier access to services like AWS Direct Connect, which offers a consistent, low-latency connection to the AWS cloud service. We’ve also implemented more advanced metrics gathering to enhance visibility into the network, which will help us optimize its performance for our member community.
Procurement success
The ShareIT catalogue grew by 18% this past year. This included new agreements for enterprise resource planning (ERP), uninterruptible power supply (UPS), and AWS cloud provisioning, which are already helping members save time and money.
3. Advocating for Alberta’s research and education tech leaders
In addition to advocating for digital equity in the province, we are also working to raise awareness of the amazing technical accomplishments of our researchers, schools, and public institutions — as well as the tools and infrastructure needed to propel our province to the next level.
The Future of Alberta’s SuperNet
We conducted an intensive survey with Cybera’s K-12 members to identify their SuperNet needs and challenges. This data will form the foundation of our advocacy to the Government of Alberta for the next iteration of the Alberta SuperNet contract.
Improving rural internet access
Cybera’s policy team wrapped up a pilot project with the Ministry of Technology and Innovation that studied residential broadband speeds in three rural communities. We are now developing toolkits that will assist rural leaders bridge their own connectivity gaps.
Building member stories
We’ve begun documenting how Alberta researchers and educators are using digital technologies to streamline their work. These stories will showcase the value of Alberta innovation to the public and government leaders. We can’t wait to share them with you!
4. Protect and secure: defending Alberta’s data
With cyber threats on the rise, “protect and secure” is more than a pillar: it’s a necessity.
Advancing the regional Security Operations Centre (rSOC)
Our partnership with AARNet has resulted in a synchronized, two-continent security service specifically tailored for the unique needs of higher education. In the past year, we have transitioned (or begun transitioning) three post-secondary institutions in Alberta to the rSOC.
Strengthening our routing
We helped 38 members implement route origin authorizations (ROAs), significantly strengthening the integrity of Alberta’s network routing.
Shared assessments for collaborative improvements
The 2025 National Cybersecurity Assessment offered through CANARIE saw its highest uptake to date by Alberta post-secondaries, with 25 institutions taking part. This comprehensive review identifies and analyzes the most significant cyber threats facing Canada’s higher education sector, helping organizations and government funders improve cybersecurity preparedness and resilience.
Building on our foundational relationship with members
An effective roadmap relies on the community it serves. This year, we developed a member relations department to serve as the foundation to enact our strategy.
Our new member relations team spent the year strengthening ties with members, including the K-12 sector, which directly led to the rollout of a new Virtual Firewall Community of Practice.
We also saw incredible member engagement at Cyber Summit 2025, which hosted over 330 attendees. For 2026, our goal is to make the Summit even more accessible to our rural and northern members.
What’s next?
As we look toward the second year of our roadmap, we still have a lot to do!
Our team is investigating how AI can enhance our current services, as well as how we should be advocating to the government about AI’s impact on privacy and infrastructure.
We expect the big focus on data sovereignty and the importance of local networks to also feature heavily in infrastructure planning discussions with our national partners, as well as members and provincial governments.
We want to thank our entire community for being a part of this journey! Your feedback shaped this roadmap, and your participation is what makes it work.
Want to get involved in a community of practice? Have a digital success story you want us to share? Is there a specific service or technological advancement we should be investigating? Contact our Member Relations team to get involved!