As part of its Project Galileo and Athenian Projects, global CDN technology provider Cloudflare has announced that its Cloudflare One suite of Zero Trust security technologies is now free to use for at-risk public interest organizations and municipal and state election sites.
Organizations may strengthen their defenses against cyberthreats, network visibility, productivity, and agility with the aid of zero trust technologies and concepts.
Some benefits of implementing Zero Trust tools and principles include:
- Improved security – By assuming that all users, devices, and systems are potentially risky, Zero Trust approaches can help organizations better protect against cyber threats and breaches. This is especially important in today’s landscape, where cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated and targeted.
- Enhanced visibility – Zero Trust tools often provide detailed visibility into network activity, allowing organizations to identify and respond to potential threats in real-time.
- Increased productivity – By implementing Zero Trust principles, organizations can allow employees to access the resources they need to do their job without compromising security. This can help increase productivity and improve the overall user experience.
- Better compliance – Many regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), require organizations to implement robust security measures to protect sensitive data. Zero Trust approaches can help organizations meet these requirements and avoid costly fines and penalties.
- Greater agility – Zero Trust approaches are often more flexible and adaptable than traditional security measures, allowing organizations to quickly respond to changes in their environment and adapt to new threats.
Organizations like non-profits, public interest groups, and election sites will now have access to Cloudflare’s comprehensive and tightly integrated Zero Trust tools that were traditionally only available to large enterprises and are utilized by over 10,000 clients today.
“Cloudflare is the only security provider ensuring that Zero Trust is accessible to those most in need – the vulnerable groups in our society, journalists, and nonprofits, as well as the sites that ensure we have trusted, free, and fair elections in the United States,” said Matthew Prince, Co-Founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “These organizations face constant threats and need to be safe online to achieve their missions – and now they’ll have access to the same security architecture that Fortune 500 companies are using.”
Journalists, Humanitarian Organizations, Political Dissidents
Zero Trust is a cutting-edge security approach that demands rigorous identity verification for every person and device, ensuring that all traffic into and out of an organization is validated and permitted. The previous paradigm assumed that a person or device in a network was trustworthy and had access to everything in the network once it was present. That strategy has the drawback of giving an attacker complete control of the network once they have gained access.
Zero Trust has become standard for large enterprises, but so far has left out smaller organizations due to smaller IT teams, limited budgets, and lack of resources. “Since COVID, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are more digitally exposed but have not been able to keep up with the right security posture and are increasingly being targeted for cybersecurity attacks,” stated Gartner.
Equal Access to Zero Trust
Participants in Cloudflare’s Project Galileo include journalists, humanitarian organizations, and political dissidents who frequently face violence because of their work protecting vulnerable populations.
Local and state election offices that seek to protect elections in the U.S. are Athenian Project participants.
These organizations would lack the resources and security know-how required to fend against complex threats. Prior to now, advanced security architecture was unattainable yet essential for advancing their missions and safeguarding their staff and members, stated Cloudflare. Now with Cloudflare One, these at-risk groups can:
- Automatically protect organizations from phishing attacks – One of the most common online assault methods is email. Cloudflare Area 1 Security makes sure that harmful emails are stopped before they reach the inboxes of employees. When a malicious link is clicked that has come from another source, Cloudflare’s DNS filtering and Browser Isolation halt the request before the harmful destination can load.
- Connect all employees, applications, partners, and volunteers – Employees may use internal tools from anywhere and manage who has access to which applications or services. Administrators can limit which collaborators and volunteers have access to particular apps and resources while keeping track of all attempts.
- Secure a path to the Internet – Cloudflare One offers an encrypted, protected on-ramp to the full Internet and prevents sensitive data from leaving the company, whether you’re connecting to a Wi-Fi network while you’re on the move or downloading a file from an unknown source. When a connection attempt is made to a harmful website, Cloudflare One will prevent it, check downloads for malware, and block the download before the user can access it. Administrators can establish rules that limit uploads to authorized locations while preventing intentional or unintentional data loss.
