MobileSyrup: CIRA giving away free online protection service to Canadians
By Brad Bennett | MobileSyrup | April 23, 2020
The agency is rolling this out now to help protect Canadians working from home
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is rolling out a new service called the ‘Canadian Shield‘ to help keep Canadians stay safe as the work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The program is a DNS firewall, but it has some extra features that might make people safer while they work from home, including an adult content blocker, malware, botnet and phishing protections.
While DNS protection may work like a traditional anti-virus program, it can be safer in practice, and it’s often used in businesses around the world to help keep their internet traffic safe. That said, if you’re already using a program like this, the CIRA recommends leaving it installed as extra protection.
To understand how the Canadian Shield works, you first need a small intro what DNS is.
DNS stands for domain name system, and it’s how computers match an IP address with a domain name. For instance, the CIRA’s domain name is CIRA.ca, but it’s IP address is 192.228.29.1. The DNS matches these two things together to make sure that people who search for the CRIA are going to the right sites and not being tracked online.
