CIRA strengthens defence in depth strategy, improves threat detection and response by 75%.

The Overview

With CIRA’s growth and focus on innovation, it’s no surprise the IT team is progressive. With a defence in depth security strategy already in place, CIRA sought to strengthen its threat monitoring and reporting, and elevate its incident response.

The team chose Covalence to improve its visibility and threat defence, and added Field Effect’s Incident Response (IR) Readiness Package to plan for potential security incidents.

The Company

With a mission to build a better internet for Canadians, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) manages more than 2.9 million registered .CA domains, registry services, cyber security technologies and programs, and more.

Scott McMullen, Manager of Network Security, joined CIRA’s IT operations six years ago. It was CIRA’s size, culture, and focus on people that attracted him. Working with a team of four, Scott manages system administration and IT security.

The Challenge

It was critical CIRA’s IT and cyber security kept pace with the organization’s fast growth. CIRA required better tools to proactively identify and stop evolving threats. At the same time, Scott wanted to ensure the team was prepared for the unexpected with a plan and resources in place for incident investigation, forensics, response, and remediation.

The Solution

CIRA chose Field Effect’s Covalence® threat monitoring, detection, and response platform and the company’s IR Readiness Package. Covalence’s monitoring capabilities have become a key piece in CIRA’s daily work managing its Anycast domain name service (DNS) and registry services. Scott likes Covalence’s intuitive design and its managed detection and response capabilities. The level of threat analysis is also impressive.

“From the alerts and reporting, I immediately see all of the detail, the priority level, and the recommended response.”

“I don’t need to sort through security event logs or investigate a volume of non-priority alerts. Field Effect analysts check each alert and this provides a second set of experienced eyes across our network.”