A growing effort to strengthen ties between Montreal’s tech sector and Israel’s innovation ecosystem drew an impressive crowd this week despite freezing winter conditions and increased anti-Israel sentiment, as MTL‑IL Tech hosted its second major event since launching last year.
The gathering, titled “Cyber Resilience with Code Blue Cyber,” brought together close to 100 professionals from cybersecurity, law, finance, banking, investment, and technology. As coincidence would have it, the event took place shortly before Israel’s CyberTech 2026 in Tel Aviv.
Organized by Yaron Cohen and Jillian Friedman, who both work in the tech industry in Montreal, the majority of attendees came from Montreal’s Jewish and Israeli communities. Another roughly 10 percent of participants at the event were not Jewish and were drawn instead by the subject matter and the opportunity to connect with a global tech network.
“I was impressed by the rich cross‑section of tech workers-professionals, engineers, and others-who all came together to build bridges. They shared an underlying connection to Israel, yet they were meeting because of tech,” Friedman told The Jerusalem Post. “Montreal has a large Jewish community, and many events focus on supporting Israel, the Jewish community, or the business community. This meetup felt like a natural way to merge those spaces.”
While no public official attended this past event, according to Cohen and Friedman, municipal and federal representatives have expressed interest in attending future events as they have recognized that cyber resilience is a national priority.
“Quebec’s ecosystem has very established industries, like aerospace with Bombardier and Airbus and innovation naturally grows as an offshoot of those sectors,” Cohen said. But when it comes to newer technologies, we had a strong period around 2015, and since then it has weakened. But recently there’s been renewed interest in funding, especially in cyber.”
Urgency understood
Fasken partner Peter Villani set the tone for the event with a stark assessment of the threat landscape not only in Quebec, but around the world, telling the audience that the stakes are rising faster than most organizations can adapt with the average cost of a cyberattack in Canada now estimated at $6.9 million and one attack occurring every 39 seconds.
“Cybersecurity and cyber resilience are central pillars of national security, economic and business stability, and geopolitical strategy,” he said, noting that his firm faces more than 100 attempted intrusions every day. “It’s not if an attack will reach your walls, but when it will reach your walls.”
Nareg Froundjian,a technology lawyer with Fasken's Privacy and Cybersecurity group noted a clear upward trend in attacks but also improvements in organizational preparedness.
“A lot of clients today are well‑equipped and bouncing back quicker than ever, with backups not affected by ransomware, which is the cancer that exists in this space,” he said, urging companies to involve legal experts early and to rely on structured response plans.
“An instant response plan is a way for the right information to be escalated to the right people at the right time, so that you have around the table the right actors that are able to make decisions,” he added.
Normand Borduas of Crowe BGK brought a different perspective, shaped by his years as a police officer before shifting into digital forensics. He described the evolution from DNA‑based investigations to the complex world of cyber evidence.
“DNA is not going to give you the intent or the conspiracy,” he explained. “Forensics will bring you the accomplices, but also the intent.” The challenge, he added, is that digital evidence is as fragile as anything found at a physical crime scene. “Once evidence is contaminated, it’s gone. We won’t be able to use it.”
From prevention to adaptability
Refael Franco, founder of Israeli cyber crisis management company Code Blue which is expanding into Canada, emphasized to the crowd that true resilience requires a shift in mindset from prevention to adaptability.
“Resilience first instead of a prevention mindset,” he said.
According to him, innovation depends on governments being willing to take risks. “If you want to be a leader in innovation and to see more and more startups, the government should take the risk.”
Franco recounted one of the most dramatic episodes of his career: a massive cyberattack on Israel’s water infrastructure in April 2020. He received the call at four in the morning as a chain reaction of breaches unfolded, part of an Iranian attempt to poison five percent of the population. His team built a fake facility to mislead the attackers and buy time.
“It’s not a technology issue,” he said. “It’s taking decisions under uncertain situations.”
That philosophy underpins Code Blue Cyber’s approach, which aims to resolve cyber incidents in five to ten days, far faster than the industry norm of four to six weeks. Franco told the crowd that Code Blue’s goal is to bring knowledge from Israel to Montreal in order to help infrastructure within tech companies using the company’s proven methods and tools.
Growing community
According to Friedman, while Montreal is known for Mila, a Montreal-based artificial intelligence research institute, and Ontario has several universities that are “breeding grounds for high tech talent,” Canada is seeing a “real brain drain” that needs a durable, engaged tech community like MTL-IL Tech.
“Canada has a lot going for it in tech, but it needs more fuel to keep the momentum going. That’s another reason this meetup matters,” she told The Post. “There is a lore for Israeli tech, it interests people and they want to learn from it.”
With a rising tide of antisemitism also hitting the Jewish community across Canada, Friedman said that the meetup is kept neutral, “this is a meeting place for tech,” she said.
For Cohen, the event provided “an opportunity to show a different side of the country: tech diplomacy. It highlighted that innovation grows from the bottom up, rather than only through formal channels.”