Cloudflare's Athenian Project Expands Internationally

Over the past few years, there has been a rise in online threats targeting democratically-held elections worldwide. These threats range from attempts to restrict information availability to full disruptions of the voting process. In response, Cloudflare launched the Athenian Project in 2017 to provide free Enterprise level services to state and local election websites in the United States. Due to increasing cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure globally, there has been a growing demand for extending these cybersecurity protections to election entities worldwide. To address this need, Cloudflare collaborated with The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the Design 4 Democracy Coalition (D4D). Through these partnerships, Cloudflare provides free Enterprise Cloudflare services to election management bodies and groups working on election reporting. The collaboration also involves training and direct assistance to help these entities stay online in the face of large-scale cyberattacks. In addition, Cloudflare extended its support to provide a suite of products to eligible state parties in the United States through its partnership with Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC). This initiative aims to better secure these entities from cyber attacks and protect democracy in the digital age.