it held a public election for its initial twelve directors. Its first annual general meeting was held 1 December 2001 in Toronto, Ontario. Milestones In April 2008, CIRA announced that it had surpassed 1 million registered .ca domains. It announced in October 2009, that it would initiate testing for securing the .ca domain space using DNSSEC. In 2010, CIRA stopped accepting new registrations for third-level domains like "example.on.ca", which prior to CIRA's inception, were imposed on registrants wanting a second-level domain like "example.ca", but who could not meet the domain name registry's (UBC) standing requirements. Also in 2010, it announced it had reached 1.5 million registered .ca domains, and it launched a national consultation called the Canadian Internet Forum, designed to engage Canadians on Internet governance and policy. In 2012, CIRA announced it had already reached 2 million .ca registered domains. That year it launched Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). In 2014, CIRA started a Community Investment Program, and in 2015, launched the Internet Performance Test initiative. Additional activities Security In September 2012, CIRA held a DNSSEC key signing ceremony, and published its first signed .ca zone file in January 2013. In 2014, it launched its D-Zone DNS firewall and introduced Anycast DNS. A year after its launch, D-Zone was protecting 800,000 users from malware, ransomware and other cyber-attacks in schools, hospitals, municipalities and small businesses across Canada. In June 2016 it announced delivering a white-label Anycast version of D-Zone. In June 2018, CIRA announced a partnership with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, safeguarding K-12 schools by incorporating data from its Project Arachnid into its D-Zone platform. Fury In July 2016, CIRA announced it would be offering its back-end registry service called FURY, to gTLDs and ccTLDs around the world. Its first gTLD was .kiwi in October 2016. The first ccTLD would be .sx which went live on FURY in November 2017. In 2019, its second and largest ccTLD .ca was added to the platform, and later it added gTLD .mls. Controversy In March 2006, Clyde Beattie, former chair of the CIRA Board of Directors and Bernard Turcotte, former President and CEO of CIRA sent an open letter to ICANN expressing concerns on ICANN's "accountability", "transparency", and "fair processes". CIRA has itself invited concerns and controversy by changing the make-up of its Board of Directors, and by removing the reference to "registration" from a clause in its letters patent, allowing