Thank you very much, Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee.
Most people know the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, or CIRA, as the operator of the .ca registry. Our primary mission is the operation of a safe, stable and secure .ca domain space.
CIRA is recognized as a global leader in the domain name industry. In fact, many other countries leverage our infrastructure, services and knowledge for their own domain name registries. Our technology is considered best in class among our peers. In short, CIRA is fully equipped to navigate the COVID-19 crisis. We are confident in our ability to protect the integrity of .ca.
To date, we have tracked just over 2,000 .ca domain names with COVID-19-related keywords. For context, since January we have registered over 200,000 .ca domain names. This is aligned with what we are seeing from our peers in Europe and around the world, where COVID-19-related domains make up less than 1% of registrations so far this year. However, it’s also important to note that many of these domains are perfectly legitimate, and even positive, such as conquercovid19.ca, a campaign to support first responders.
We scrutinize all COVID-19-related domains carefully to ensure that they comply with our rules, particularly Canadian presence requirements, and to ensure that all domains stay Canadian. We are also working with our global domain name community, including organizations like the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries, to ensure that we are aligned with the best practices of our peers around the world.
However, it is not within CIRA's mandate to review or authenticate the content of .ca websites, nor would such authentication be effective, as the Internet, and related threats, is global. While .ca domain names are bound by Canadian law, thousands of other threats come from outside our borders. There are well-established existing tools and processes in place to deal with fraud online and cyber-attacks. If Canadians come across any domain they suspect of being used fraudulently or maliciously, they should contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre or the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. We work closely with both of those organizations.
When it comes to fraud on the Internet, it is important to remember that hackers love a crisis. While technical solutions form an important barrier to online fraud and cyber-threats, the biggest attack vector is human frailty. Cyber-thieves exploit anxiety, uncertainty and fear to prey on Canadians when they are at their most vulnerable. Unfortunately, the current COVID-19 pandemic provides fertile ground for these criminals.
In this environment, we launched CIRA Canadian Shield. This is a free security and privacy solution for individual Canadians and their families. Working with our partner, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, we are already protecting more than 50,000 Canadians with Canadian Shield as they work, learn, teach and socialize while at home during the pandemic. Canadian Shield reflects CIRA's commitment to build a trusted Internet for Canadians. We look forward to the opportunity to protect every Canadian with this free service.
CIRA is helping to protect Canadian hospitals, schools, universities and municipalities through our enterprise cybersecurity service DNS Firewall. It has an install base of more than 1.1 million users, which includes students, teachers, doctors, municipal workers and first responders across Canada.