Inside CIRA: How Canada's .ca Registry Became a Global DNS & Cybersecurity Force
5/16/202653 min
David Shipley interviews Jon Ferguson, VP at CIRA, about how the Canadian Internet Registration Authority evolved from early paper-based .ca registrations at UBC into a 142-person, member-based not-for-profit running .ca and authoritative Anycast DNS infrastructure now supporting 550+ TLDs globally. Ferguson explains how .ca's Canadian presence requirements help keep abuse rates low, and how CIRA reinvests surpluses into grants and cybersecurity tools, including Canadian Shield (DNS-based malware/phishing blocking and encrypted DNS with limited data retention) used by about 500,000 people and generating about 20 million blocks per month. They discuss CIRA's focus on municipalities, schools, hospitals, and universities, its move into endpoint security and a managed detection and response partner program with Calian, and concerns about AI-driven threats, online harm, and rebuilding trust and real-world connection.
00:00 Weekend Show Kickoff
01:30 Jon's Cyber Journey
03:06 Inside CIRA DNS Role
04:59 What Is CIRA
07:23 Origin Story Of Dot Ca
13:01 Anycast DNS Explained
16:27 Canadian Shield DNS Firewall
22:21 Serving Public Sector Needs
26:18 Endpoint And MDR Expansion
35:05 Mission Over Money
40:39 What Keeps Him Up
46:19 Hope And Balance Online
50:55 Wrap Up And Thanks
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDavid Shipley· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to Cyber Security Today on the Weekend, and I'm really excited to share with you a conversation I had with a colleague and friend, John Ferguson, who's a vice president at CIRA. You've probably never heard of CIRA, this Canadian Internet Registry Authority, and they're far more than just the folks responsible for the country code .ca for Canada. And we're gonna cover in this episode this evolution of this Canadian not-for-profit that started as a pad of paper registering names to websites at a university to become a global player responsible for 500 of the delegated top-level domains around the world, and building a host of cybersecurity tools with the mission first, not just the money. And so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I had, uh, in chatting with John today and learned a few things along the way. I'm really excited to welcome you, John, to the show and to chat with you about the fascinating world of CIRA and cybersecurity. Thanks for joining today.
Jon Ferguson· Guest1:13
Thanks for having me, David. It's always, it's always a good chat when we get together. Just looking forward to it.
David Shipley· Host1:18
Awesome. One of the things I love to do is introduce people to, to the people I know. And so we've known each other for a few years. We've worked together through the work that Bosonron and CIRA does.