iscover
Share this article on:
Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Cloud company Cloudflare looks back on 10 years of providing free DDoS protection to public interest groups.
Cloud connectivity firm Cloudflare has celebrated 10 years of its Project Galileo, a free initiative to provide unmetered and free protection from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to public interest groups at risk of cyber attack.
These groups include minority and human rights organisations, independent journalists, and programs protecting democracy.
To illustrate the challenges such organisations face, Cloudflare said that between 1 May 2023 and 31 March 2024, it stopped 31.93 billion cyber threats aimed at organisations under the Project Galileo umbrella alone.
A survey of the program’s participants found that just 36 per cent of them had a single person dedicated to managing cyber security, while 46 per cent had a cyber security team of just one to 10 people.
Out of all members of the program, journalists and media organisations were the most targeted, while wars in Ukraine and now between Israel and Hamas are also drivers of cyber attacks.
“Part of protecting the free and open internet means making sure that civil society and political opposition around the world are not forced offline simply for speaking out or challenging those in power. Cloudflare is often the only defence standing between these vulnerable humanitarian, human rights, and journalism groups, and the people who want to take them down,” Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, said in a statement.
“To see this problem 10 years ago, and to be in a position to help, has been one of our company’s most important projects, particularly for our employees, who are always willing to make time to onboard and assist new organisations. This is part of our mission to help build a better internet.”
Matthew Belfield, head of communications and marketing at the LGBT Foundation, said Project Galileo has been an essential tool to keep the charity safe.
“Project Galileo has been fundamental when our day-to-day has so much risk of online threats and attacks – civil rights organisations like ours need support 365 days a year,” Belfield said.
“It is important to note that as a registered charity, we’re not massively resourced, so staying online is how we’re able to save lives. The team at Cloudflare and Ave Design Studio that keep us secure and online every single day are the unsung heroes to organisations like ours.”
Cloudflare’s 54 partners help identify sites that could participate in the program. Evan Summers, program director for digital resilience at the National Democratic Institute, said Project Galileo was an important part of keeping democratic institutions safe.
“Cloudflare’s Project Galileo stands out to us for its commitment to providing not only free but also easily accessible resources,” Summers said.
“The project’s user-friendly resource guides, for example, have made it much easier for NDI to introduce concepts like DDoS protection to our diverse range of democracy partners working to protect their operations – especially in the context of elections and other critical political processes.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
Be the first to hear the latest developments in the cyber industry.
