Protect your family with the same advanced technology that protects Canadian organizations—for free. CIRA Canadian Shield double checks to see if websites are malicious and if we know they are, we’ll stop you from visiting them.
The service is completely free, meaning no advertising, no tracking and no reselling your data to others.
Three options for your DNS
- Private: Offering DNS resolution only
- Protected: Adds malware, phishing, botnet and scam protection
- Family: Adds pornographic content to the block list
Canadian Shield is available to be set up both for entire networks or on a variety of devices and platforms.
To protect devices while they are connected to your home internet, CIRA recommends setting up CIRA Canadian Shield on your router/gateway as this will protect your whole network.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the DNS?
The DNS standard is as old as the world-wide-web itself (remember when we called it that!) It is a massively redundant hierarchical system of databases that is used to correlate human readable domain names with the IP addresses of the servers where websites and applications live. It is designed to ensure 100% availability for the Internet’s critical infrastructure. It looks like this:
www.cira.ca –> 52.60.203.65
Most households don’t think about the DNS and stick with whatever their ISP has pre-configured but there are many options available for those that choose to use a different service to handle their queries. The CIRA Canadian Shield is one such option.
If you want to get really deep then please read our resource on how the DNS works or see the full glossary of terms.
How is CIRA Canadian Shield different from a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and will it work with my VPN?
The core benefit of CIRA Canadian Shield is that it blocks malware and phishing using the DNS. While it does offer options for DNS encryption it does not encrypt all traffic and so is not a replacement for those looking for a full VPN.
The exception is for those looking for a mobile VPN specifically for browser-based traffic over HTTP while on public networks. In this instance, the mobile application has an option, called “Secure WiFi” that is a paid upgrade and will encrypt all non-HTTPs traffic when on public WiFi networks.
Please note that if you are using a VPN then the CIRA Canadian Shield will not be providing DNS service, including protection, while you are on the VPN.