Canada’s ccTLD registry, CIRA, has made the internet a bit safer and more private this week with the launch of CIRA Canadian Shield – a free DNS firewall service that will provide online privacy and security to individuals and families across Canada.
Continue reading CIRA Provides Canadians With Free DNS Firewall To Enhance Security And PrivacyTechnology and internet use has changed in Canada since the COVID-19 pandemic began a survey data from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has found. Widespread school closures, social distancing, and work from home has significantly shifted how Canadians are using the internet to learn, work, and stay connected with friends and family.
The findings suggest that the number of Canadians working from home has skyrocketed, and that many are experiencing slower internet speeds as video streaming and video and teleconferencing are on the rise.
“COVID-19 has changed everything. It feels like overnight the entire country had to move their work, schooling, and social calendar online,” said David Fowler, vice-president, marketing and communications, CIRA, the company that manages the .ca ccTLD.
“Over the past few weeks, the power of the internet to connect us has never been more clear, nor more important. The data shows how the country is coping with our massive shift online. There are struggles as Canadians discover that working from home isn’t without its pitfalls, but we are also seeing families and friends playing games, hosting video conference parties and connecting online like never before. As Canadians do their part to fight this virus, we hope this data helps shine a light on what folks are doing online during this very unusual time in our country’s history.”
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced the opening of its annual $1million+ Community Investment Program granting initiative for 2020. Not-for-profits, charities, and researchers are invited to apply for funding that will improve the health and quality of Canadaâs internet. Applications close on 25 February.
The Community Investment Program from Canadaâs ccTLD manager focuses on internet-related projects in Canada and awards grants of up to $100,000, including one grant of up to $250,000. To ensure support for digital projects in underserved areas and communities, this yearâs granting cycle will give preference to initiatives that benefit students and rural, northern and Indigenous communities. CIRA is looking for projects in these four areas:
âSince 2014 weâve funded more than 150 internet projects from coast to coast to coast. Now weâre focusing in on some of Canadaâs hardest to reach places,â said David Fowler, vice-president, marketing and communications. âWeâre especially looking for projects that benefit students as well as people in rural, northern and Indigenous communities who for too long have faced barriers to participating in Canadaâs digital economy. We hope our Community Investment Program grants can help teach our youth the digital skills they need to be safe online, and fill the gaps in education and internet access for people in under-served areas of Canada.”
Since 2014, CIRAâs Community Investment Program grants have provided $6.7 million in funding for 151 projects across Canada. To learn more about the program, funding categories, and projects that CIRA has supported in the past, head to cira.ca/grants.
Past winners have included:
Canadaâs ccTLD registry has published the results of their 2019 Cybersecurity Survey Report that found 71% of organisations reported experiencing at least one cyber-attack that impacted the organisation in some way, including time and resources, out of pocket expenses and paying a ransom.
âNow more than ever, Canadians need trust in the internet,â said Byron Holland, president and CEO, CIRA. âWe believe that security is the foundation of that trust which is why we have leveraged our experience safeguarding the .CA domain to help Canadian organisations protect themselves and their users.â
The report provides an overview of the Canadian cybersecurity landscape and surveyed more than 500 individuals with responsibility over IT security decisions at both private and public sector institutions across Canada to learn more about how they are coping with the increase in cyber threats.
The full report, released as part of CIRAâs Cybersecurity Awareness Month activities, also found 96% of respondents said that cybersecurity awareness training was at least somewhat effective in reducing incidents while only 22% conducted the training monthly or better.
Other key findings were:
âWhile technical solutions are important, the best layer of security for any organisation are cyber-aware employees,â said Jacques Latour, chief security officer, CIRA. âWe are happy to see more organisations embracing cybersecurity awareness training as a critical element of their defence. However, there is more work to be done to ensure the quality and rigor of the training offered keeps pace with the ever-changing world of cybersecurity.â
The full report is available to download from: https://cira.ca/resources/cybersecurity/report/2019-cira-cybersecurity-survey
CIRA is sending in the law enforcement, the “Eh Team”, threatening Canadians who choose a .com or other top-level domain instead of their very own .ca in a humorous attempt to encourage more .ca domain name registrations.
It’s the Canadian ccTLD registry’s first ever broadcast campaign, called “Don’t Be A Traitor”, and is hoping a little fun will help educate Canadians as to the value of .ca domain names for Canadian businesses.
”Even today, it is estimated that more than 50 per cent of Canadian businesses still don’t have a website,” said Byron Holland, president and CEO of CIRA. “These businesses are missing out on economic advantages that the web offers, and if they don’t have a .CA domain, they are missing out on potential customers as well. Our goal with this campaign is to break through the noise with some over-the-top humour, and demonstrate the value of a .CA domain for Canadian businesses.”
CIRA’s .CA Domain Squad is dogged in their efforts to help Canadian business make the right choice to attract more customers to their businesses with a .CA domain name. Their methods are at times extreme, but it’s only because they care.
CIRA explains the .CA Domain Squad is comprised of:
“.CA domain names help Canadian businesses attract more customers, enhance their brand, and they help support Canada’s internet,” said David Fowler, vice president, marketing and communications at CIRA. “Our goal with this campaign is to promote the value of .CA to support Canadian businesses. Using anything else is almost criminal.”
The commercial will air over broadcast television in the Greater Toronto Area from 23 September until 17 November. It will also be featured on streaming services and in cinemas in the Greater Toronto Area.
An integrated social media, search and content campaign featuring the .CA Domain Squad will accompany the commercial.
ICANN65 has only just concluded and ICANN has opened registration for the next ICANN meeting â ICANN66, which will also be the 20th annual general meeting â to be held in Montréal, Canada, from 2 to 7 November.
To register for the meeting, go to: https://events.icann.org/icann66-montreal/registration
The importance of keeping ones domain name secure is something that many organisations and people take for granted. With .ca domain names in mind, but also being applicable to all domain name registrants, the Canadian ccTLD manager CIRA has provided a handy Ultimate Domain Name Security Checklist.
CIRA note âit can be easy to forget just how many applications rely on the DNS to function, and how critical domain names are to the entire internet ecosystem.â
âIf you manage a .CA domain name, or any other domain name, it is critical to understand just how central they are to both the functioning of your business and the security of your systems. No matter how small your business is or how insignificant some of your domains may be, if they become compromised they can cause headaches that spread throughout your ecosystem. Even old, unused domains can be used by hackers to infiltrate or embarrass your organization.â
The guide has a checklist of the following records domain name registrants should keep and actions they should take:
The original version of the checklist on CIRAâs website was created in HTML allowing for copy/paste directly into Github, Jira, Confluence, or wherever else workflow is managed. CIRA recommend reviewing and updating once a year.
In their post, CIRA acknowledge the âchecklist is pretty exhaustiveâsome would say itâs the ultimateâif you would like dive deeper into domain name security, we suggest you take a look at A Registrant’s Guide to Protecting Domain Name Registration Accounts from ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC).â
âOur friends at Akamai also recently published a great guide: Protecting your domain names: Taking the first steps. It goes into detail on a few of the items in our checklist and has some great insight.â
To copy/paste the original of the checklist, go to the original version on the CIRA website here.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) released a research report last week displaying Canadians’ opinions and experiences regarding the internet and fake news, privacy, cybersecurity and access. Based on a survey of over 1,200 Canadian internet users in December 2018, the report highlights areas of concern, including apprehension around the upcoming Canadian federal election. The report also indicates what Canadians want from industry, the Canadian government and citizens themselves to create a better internet in Canada.
CIRA’s report offers several recommendations to improve Canada’s internet, including enhanced investments by the Canadian government, actions around cybersecurity and privacy that Canadian businesses can take right away and opportunities for Canadian citizens to improve the internet they rely on every day.
“With the rise of misinformation online and threats to digital privacy and cybersecurity, Canadians are demanding more of government, industry and others when it comes to Canada’s internet,” says CIRA’s CEO Byron Holland. “The question that remains is how best to give Canadians what they want, while maintaining the open, interoperable internet that has become ubiquitous in the lives of most Canadians.”
The report comes out in the lead up to the upcoming
Canadian Internet Governance Forum, taking place this week in Toronto, where internet stakeholders from across the country will meet to discuss these key issues. CIRA is a sponsor, co-organiser and participant.
“There are some basic actions that can be taken today to increase Canadian privacy and security online,” says Jacques Latour, CIRA’s chief security officer. “Canadian businesses must learn and follow privacy laws and make cybersecurity a priority. Governments must invest and participate in local infrastructure such as Canadian internet exchange points to keep data local, and Canadians must learn to spot and avoid personal cyber threats such as phishing emails.”
“With a federal election around the corner, fake news is a real concern and Canadians agree,” says David Fowler, CIRA’s vice president of marketing and communications and vice-chair of MediaSmarts board of directors. “Canadians see social media companies, the government and journalists as key players to halt misinformation online. But citizens themselves have a role to play and increased investments in media literacy will help Canadians spot fake news and thereby thwart its influence.”
To read the full report visit cira.ca/betterinternet.
Some of the key facts on Canadian internet users highlighted by CIRA are:
Of Canadian internet users:
· 75% say they come across fake news at least sometimes
· 70% are concerned that fake news could impact the outcome of the next federal election.
· 72% are willing to disclose some or a little personal information in exchange for a valuable/convenient service.
· 87% are concerned that businesses with access to customers’ personal data willingly share it with third parties without consent.
· 86% believe it is important that government data, including the personal information of Canadians, be stored and transmitted in Canada only.
· 87% are concerned about a potential cyberattack against organizations with access to their personal data.
· Only 19% say they would continue to do business with an organization if their personal data were exposed in a cyberattack.
· 78% are concerned about the potential security threats related to the Internet of Things.
· 69% believe the high cost of internet services, including for mobile data, is hurting Canada’s economy and prosperity.
· 83% believe that universal access to high-speed internet is important for Canada’s overall economic growth and prosperity.
· 70% agree that the Canadian government should be doing more to support public access to high-speed internet.
· 75% say they only know a little or hardly anything about the topic of global control and regulation of the internet.
· 50% are concerned that the global internet could fracture into regional blocks that adopt very different regulatory principles and policies.
CIRA announced Monday it has added 2 new ccTLD partners for its D-Zone Anycast DNS service – Singapore (.sg) and Chile (.cl), taking to 10 ccTLDs that use the service, as well as adding 2 new global nodes in Brazil and Japan – as the company best known as the manager of the Canadian ccTLD .ca continues to spread its wings.
The addition of Singapore Network Information Centre (SGNIC), the country code top level domain manager for .sg and NIC Chile, who manages .cl, adds 180,000 and 570,000 domain names under management respectively to its service.
CIRA now has 25 nodes across the globe providing a robust network that powers D-Zone Anycast DNS for their ccTLD customers which answers approximately 180 million DNS queries per day for its TLD customers to help provide greater resiliency to their networks.
The 10 ccTLDs that now use CIRAâs D-Zone Anycast DNS are .cl, .cr (Costa Rica), .dk (Denmark), .nl (Netherlands), .nu (Niue), .nz (New Zealand), .pt (Portugal), .se (Sweden), .sg and of course Canadaâs .ca. D-Zone Anycast DNS answers queries for nine percent of all global ccTLDs domain names.
DNS Anycast technology deploys identical DNS servers in different locations often in different countries. It means that when a node is taken offline, due to maintenance or for nefarious reasons, the end user doesnât notice and DNS services continue. During a cyberattack, with nodes deployed around the world one node can bear the brunt of an attack leaving others unscathed. For businesses, DNS Anycast services can be deployed to improve performance of websites and load times for web pages. With multiple nodes, the customer is closer to a node and performance improved.
âWe were looking for DNS partner with a global reputation and solid infrastructure. We found that partner in CIRA and look forward to a productive relationship,â said Queh Ser Pheng, General Manager of SGNIC.
âCIRA’s global reputation in the ccTLD community provided us with the confidence that we could trust them with our DNS. Our customers demand the highest standards of uptime and security and D-Zone Anycast DNS helps us deliver that,â said Eduardo Mercader Orta, Director of Operations, NIC Chile.
âCIRA is proud to partner with ccTLDs to provide a stable, secure, high performance DNS. Starting with DNS, our relationships have expanded to be true partnerships that include collaboration and information sharing with our ccTLD peers around the globe,â said Mark Gaudet, DNS Program Manager, CIRA.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has released its 2018 CIRA Cybersecurity Security Survey which provides an overview of the Canadian cybersecurity landscape.
For the survey, CIRA, the .ca country code top level domain (ccTLD) registry, surveyed 500 individuals with responsibility over IT security decisions at small and medium-sized businesses across Canada to learn more about how they are coping with the increase in cyber threats. The sample included both business owners and employees who manage information technology.
“A key element of building a better online Canada is ensuring Canadians have safe, secure internet access,” said Byron Holland, president & CEO, CIRA. “Through our experience in managing the .CA domain for Canadians, we hope to help lend our expertise in safeguarding Canadaâs internet so that Canadian businesses can thrive online.â
In partnership with CIRAâs technology partner, Akamai Technologies, the full report has been released to coincide with Small Business Week in Canada.
“Training and awareness are critical to ensuring your business is cyber-secure,” Jacques Latour, chief security officer, CIRA. “No matter how great your IT team is, anyone with a network-connected device can be the weak point that brings your business down.”
The report’s key findings are:
Read the full report: https://cira.ca/2018-cybersecurity-survey-report