The federal government is looking at making it mandatory for Canadian businesses and organizations to report cyberattacks, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Thursday.

"It's an option that we're considering very carefully," Mendicino told members of the public safety and national security committee.

Mendicino warned MPs on the committee that the current international situation has increased the threat of cyberattacks on Canadian businesses, organizations and different levels of government.

"I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that in the current geopolitical environment ... we are very much on high alert for potential attacks from hostile state actors, like Russia," he said.

The minister said those attacks "could manifest through cyberattacks, through ransomware, which look to identify potentially valuable targets to Canadian interests, like critical infrastructure, but equally to subnational targets, different orders of government and other sectors of the economy."

Mendicino said that since the government created the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, it has been sharing cyber threat information with owners and operators of Canadian critical infrastructure. The federal government also has created a special unit within the RCMP to coordinate police operations against cyber criminals.

Mendicino was questioned by NDP MP Alistair MacGregor as the committee continued its hearings on Canada's security posture in relation to Russia.

Read the full CBC article here.