Financial Post: CIRA officially launches free DNS firewall for consumers
By Howard Solomon, IT World Canada | Financial Post | April 23, 2020
The body that regulates the .ca domain has officially launched a free domain name system (DNS) firewall service to improve privacy and security for individuals using computers, smartphones and tablets.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) said the service, called Canadian Shield, is aimed at giving consumers the kind of protection from DNS attacks that the public and private sector get from commercial products.
“As a not-for-profit part our mandate is to help provide a protected internet for all Canadians, and this is one of the ways we can help improve the internet,” said Mark Gaudet, CIRA’s business development and product manager.
CIRA believes it’s the first deployment of a national, public DNS over HTTPS (DoH) service in the world.
The threat intelligence feed of the service will be provided by the federal government’s Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.
The new service leverages CIRA’s D-Zone DNS Firewall, which it sells to the public and private sectors and uses technology from Akamai Technologies. Four Canadian Shield nodes have been deployed in TekSavvy data centres in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Home routers/gateways need to be reconfigured to point DNS queries to Canadian Shield. CIRA offers advice for setting up routers, operating systems and other internet-connected devices like Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and 3DS. There are also apps for mobile devices through the Apple App Store and Google Play.
