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CIRA partners with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to protect children from abuse

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) announced it has signed an agreement with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to incorporate the data from its Project Arachnid platform into D-Zone DNS Firewall.
By Spencer Callaghan
Director, Brand & Communications

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) announced it has signed an agreement with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to incorporate the data from its Project Arachnid platform into D-Zone DNS Firewall.

OTTAWA – June 27 2018 – Today, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) announced it has signed an agreement with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to incorporate the data from its Project Arachnid platform into D-Zone DNS Firewall.

Project Arachnid is a platform to proactively detect child sexual abuse material and issue takedown notices to hosting providers requesting its immediate removal. Through this initiative, industry is also implementing proactive measures by downloading real-time lists of URLs that contain child sexual abuse material for blocking purposes.

CIRA will be incorporating the Project Arachnid block list into D-Zone DNS Firewall by default to help protect Canadian children from abuse and exploitation.

Key facts

  • Project Arachnid detects more than 100,000 suspected child sexual abuse images online every month and is issuing approximately 700 removal notices a day to providers.
  • Crawling thousands of pages a second, Project Arachnid can shed light on the scope of this pervasive problem and the extensive availability of child sexual abuse material on the internet.
  • CIRA is committed to protecting and supporting children, and previously announced its Cyber Secure Schools program to provide D-Zone DNS Firewall to Canadian school boards and higher education institutions.
  • D-Zone DNS Firewall is a Canadian, cloud-based cybersecurity service that protects organizations from malware, phishing and provides flexible web content filtering.
  • Incorporating the Project Arachnid block feed prevents access to these sites for more than 500,000 internet users across 70 education, municipal and business networks.
  • The Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s Cybertip.ca program is Canada’s tip line to report the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The Canadian Centre is built into the Government of Canada’s National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet.
  • Through its Community Investment Program, CIRA also previously funded the Location Extraction of Child Exploitation Networks (LECEN) through Simon Fraser University’s International CyberCrime Research Centre to help protect children from abuse online.

Executive quotes

It is critical that we all work together to counter the online sexual abuse of children and to help end the cycle of abuse for survivors. We are really pleased to be working with CIRA in our efforts to further disrupt the availability of child sexual abuse material and better protect children.

Signy Arnason, Associate Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection

As part of our mandate to build a better online Canada, we believe in ensuring the most vulnerable Canadians, our children, are safe from abuse and exploitation. We are pleased to partner with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to integrate Project Arachnid into D-Zone DNS Firewall to build on our efforts to foster a safe online environment for kids and protect our customers.

Dave Chiswell, VP of product development at CIRA

Additional resources

About the Canadian Internet Registration Authority

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) manages the .CA top-level domain on behalf of all Canadians. CIRA also develops technologies and services that help support its goal of building a better online Canada. The CIRA team operates one of the fastest-growing ccTLDs, a high-performance global DNS network, and one of the world’s most advanced back-end registry solutions. CIRA helps to support the Canadian Internet community through investments in Internet Exchange Points, the Canada Internet Forum, and the CIRA Community Investment Program.

About the Canadian Centre for Child Protection

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection is a national charity dedicated to the personal safety and protection of children. Our goal is to reduce the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, to assist in the location of missing children and to prevent child victimization.

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