To kick the week off, our Rockstar CEO Yvonne Pilon took to the podium to talk about the WHY behind Founders Week YQG; unlocking the stories, passions, and skills of our Founders locally by giving them the microphone.

Following which we were lucky enough to have Nina Tangri, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Small Business & Red Tape Reduction MPP for Mississauga-Streetsville, bring remarks from the Province on the power of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs, as well as the strength of the Digital Main Street, Invest Ontario, and Futureproofing programs being invested in to support the transition to the digital economy.

The coffee was hot, the conversation was excellent, and it was time to dive into cybersecurity!

Associate Minister Nina Tangri with Founders Week YQG partners at the Kickoff event.

Next up, world renown IP and Commercialization expert Myra Taufik moderated a wonderful conversation with Jade Buchanan, Partner at McCarthy Tetrault, an emerging leader in privacy and data protection law.

Jade has worked on some of the LARGEST cyber security incidents in Canadian history, and gave us a window into tangible action you can take to get your company or startup (no matter how big or small) thinking about your data security. Actions like, running a table top exercise with your team, understanding your vendors and how they protect the data they are getting from you, educating employees on the importance of phishing and best practices to protect the company, having someone in your startup own the Data Map that tracks where data goes and how you use it, and most of all remember that cybersecurity should be a mindset and top of mind for every employee.  You can’t simply run exercises once every three years and expect to stay protected.