Executive team

Portrait - Sami Khoury

Sami Khoury

Sami Khoury serves as the Head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (the Cyber Centre), acting as the primary source of expert advice, guidance, services, and support on cyber security for government entities, critical infrastructure owners and operators, the private sector, and the Canadian public. Sami embarked on his career at the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in 1992, initially as a research engineer specializing in the impact of emerging multimedia communications technologies. Over the years, he has held various operational and leadership roles at CSE. More recently, he served as Assistant Deputy Minister for Enterprise Technologies and Solutions. In this capacity, he was CSE’s Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Additionally, Sami led CSE’s comprehensive Research program and the 24/7 Operations Centre. Educationally, Sami holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and a Master of Applied Science from Concordia University in Montreal. In 2016, he completed a certificate program in Public Sector Leadership at the University of Ottawa.

Sami's contributions have been recognized through various accolades, including the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal and the APEX Award of Excellence for Innovation.


Portrait - Rajiv Gupta

Rajiv Gupta

Rajiv Gupta is the Associate Head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (the Cyber Centre). In this role Rajiv is responsible for advancing the Cyber Centre’s strategic vision to enable a secure digital Canada.

Prior to this role, Rajiv was the Director General of Cyber Defence Capabilities where he was responsible for the development and operations of sensors, threat discovery analytics and autonomous defence technologies deployed to protect Government of Canada networks. In this role Rajiv was also responsible for achieving national level cyber security outcomes for Canada through collaborative efforts with industry partners.

Rajiv began his career in 1998 as a software engineer in the telecommunications sector. He later joined the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in 2007 and has since worked in a variety of cyber security disciplines. Prior to his role in Cyber Defence, Rajiv served as the Director of Security Architecture and Risk Mitigation where he was responsible for supply chain risk assessments for the Government of Canada, analytic support to Investment Canada Act national security reviews, and the implementation of a cyber security risk mitigation framework for Canada’s telecommunications sector.

Rajiv holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in engineering and is a Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.


Portrait - Eric Belzile

Eric Belzile

Eric Belzile is Director General, Incident Management and Threat Mitigation at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (the Cyber Centre). The Incident Management and Threat Mitigation directorate is responsible for the entire incident management lifecycle, which includes the operations of the Cyber Centre Contact Center, the monitoring, detection, intake, triage, analysis and response to cyber incidents. His directorate is also responsible for monitoring the evolution of cyber threats against Canada and produce assessments and trending reports.

Eric started his career in the Public Service at Statistics Canada in 1989. He has occupied various positions with increasing levels of responsibility covering System Development and IT Infrastructure Service Management. At Statistics Canada, he became Director, IT Infrastructure Services, responsible for delivering and defining the strategy for all IT Infrastructure, Data Center and end-user services. In 2012, he transferred to Shared Services Canada and consolidated the security operations resources and functions to create the Government of Canada Security Operations Center (SOC), the Government of Canada Computer Incident Response Team (GC-CIRT) and the Vulnerability Management Program. In this role, he was responsible for the monitoring, detection and response of cyber incidents affecting the Government of Canada.

Eric holds a Bachelor’s degree in Informatics-Mathematics from Laval University and a Master’s degree in Management from the Université du Québec en Outaouais.


Portrait - Daniel Couillard

Daniel Couillard

Daniel Couillard is the Director General of Partnerships and Risk Mitigation at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre). The objective of the Partnerships and Risk Mitigation directorate is to increase the cyber resilience of Canada, in collaboration with partners. As such the directorate is responsible for advancing the Cyber Centre’s strategic partnerships with governments, critical infrastructure owners and stakeholders, private sector and academia. To that aim, his directorate provides cyber security advice and guidance as well as architectural assessments in key technology areas. It also implements the Cyber Resilience Program and leads the cyber supply chain integrity program in support to the Government of Canada IT procurements.

Daniel was previously Director General of Program Evolution at the Cyber Centre. He was responsible for leading strategic business change and enabling agile decision-making in the context of the complex and dynamic cyber security ecosystem. This ensures CSE meets future cyber security demands from governments, operators of systems of importance and Canadians at large.

Prior to his current role, Daniel was the Director of Cyber Futures, where he was responsible for setting the strategic direction of where the Cyber Centre needs to be in order to remain the centre of Canada’s cyber security expertise.

Daniel previously worked as a military officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, where he held appointments in the operational and technological domains, including overseas deployments. After spending 20 years with the military, he joined CSE’s Cyber Defence team in 2006 to oversee the management of its Technical Threat and Analysis capability.

In 2011, he joined the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat where he led the newly formed Government of Canada Chief Information Officer Branch Cyber Security team, where he worked until he returned to CSE in 2017.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada and a Master’s in Science from the Université du Québec à Montréal.


Portrait- Melanie Anderson

Melanie Anderson

Melanie Anderson is the Director General, Secure Solutions and Services Directorate at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, responsible for applied cryptographic research, architecture, engineering and development of secure cryptographic solutions.

In her previous role as Director, Cryptographic Security and Systems Development, Melanie and her teams were responsible for Canadian Communications Security (COMSEC) policy and compliance, evaluating the security of cryptographic products, providing cryptographic advice and guidance including preparations for the quantum threat to Cryptography, and modernizing the Government of Canada’s classified infrastructure. Melanie is an Executive Champion of the Women in Cyber and Intelligence (WICI) group at CSE, and CSE’s Co-Executive Champion for Women in Defence and Security (WiDS) in Canada. She is passionate about promoting the well-being of women in the workplace, and mentoring and encouraging girls and young women to pursue careers in STEM.

Melanie began her career at CSE in 2003 and has held numerous technical and leadership roles in cyber security and IT, including Manager of Cryptographic Systems Development, Manager of Cyber Threat Relationships and Incident Management, and Supervisor of Cyber Health and Trend Reporting. She was a technical liaison for CSE in the United States, and has held roles as a software developer, a technical trainer, and a project manager for IT systems used by Government of Canada clients.

She holds a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of New Brunswick and completed the Senior Executive Fellows Program through the Harvard Kennedy School in 2020. In 2023, Melanie was recognized by Deloitte as one of 30 Women in Cyber at the forefront of the cyber revolution and she was named one of Canada’s Top 20 Women in Cyber Security by IT World Canada.


Portrait - Jonathan Ouellet

Jonathan Ouellet

Jonathan is the Director General, Cyber Defence at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The Cyber Defence directorate develops and operates cyber security services to defend Government of Canada departments and critical infrastructure partners against cyber threats. In this role Jonathan is responsible for a suite of services that includes sensors, an analytical platform, threat discovery and mitigation.

Prior to this role, Jonathan was the Director, Autonomous Defence and Sensors, where he focused on the development of host, network, and cloud sensors. The sensors are deployed across partner networks, empowering the collection of cyber security telemetry for analysis and the autonomous mitigation of threats.

He also previously worked as Director, Enterprise Infrastructure Operations, in the Enterprise Technology Services branch at the Communication Security Establishment. During that time, he was responsible for the operation of the organization's corporate infrastructure. He led transformative initiatives that resulted in the adoption of public cloud, software-defined networking and multi-classification computing capabilities.

Jonathan has more than 20 years of experience in the intelligence community and is passionate about software development, technology infrastructure and cyber security. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the Université de Sherbrooke.


Portrait-Francis Castonguay

Francis Castonguay

Francis Castonguay is the Senior Engagement Advisor at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), responsible for improving everyone’s understanding of the Cyber Centre’s efforts and value to Canadians.

Francis initially joined CSE as Director General of Partnerships and Risk Mitigation and subsequently was Director General of Change Engagement. Prior to joining CSE, Francis led Deloitte’s Cyber Risk Services team in Ottawa, providing cybersecurity advice to government and private sector organizations. He started his cyber security career as a Communications and Electronics Engineering Officer where he had the privilege of leading operational cyber teams at the Canadian Forces Network Operations Centre (CFNOC), managing the Department of National Defence’s telecommunications services and being the Commander of the Canadian Forces Cyber Task Force. Francis also deployed to Bosnia Herzegovina where he led the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) IT security team.

Francis holds a Bachelor of Sciences (Computer) degree from le Collège militaire royal (CMR), a Master’s certificate in Program Management from York University and a Master of Defence Studies degree from the Royal Military College of Canada (RMCC).


Report a problem on this page

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please select all that apply:

Thank you for your help!

You will not receive a reply. For enquiries, please contact us.

Date modified: