Seven Years of Shielding Vulnerable Voices Online
Project Galileo, Cloudflare's initiative to protect at-risk groups from cyber attacks, marks its seventh anniversary this June. The program was launched in 2014 with a straightforward premise: organizations working in sensitive areas—human rights, independent media, education, and social justice—are disproportionately targeted by powerful opponents seeking to intimidate, silence, or steal from them. Project Galileo provides these groups with the cybersecurity resources they need to defend themselves and continue their work.
The need for such protection has only grown as the world has moved online, a shift accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to robust security tools is now critical for organizations worldwide. For Cloudflare, the project is part of a broader mission to build a better Internet. This anniversary provides an opportunity to look at the daily work of protecting these vulnerable groups, the specific threats they face, and the tools they now use to counter them.
Threat Landscape and Targeted Groups
Organizations protected under Project Galileo are often subject to attacks that can cause significant operational damage. The goals of the attackers vary: some aim to intimidate, others to silence dissenting voices completely, and some seek to steal sensitive information about activists or their constituents. These attacks are not trivial nuisances; they can cripple an organization's ability to function, preventing them from sharing information, communicating with their communities, or delivering essential services.
The program's focus has always been on providing a level of protection that these groups could not otherwise afford or access. By leveraging a global network, Project Galileo helps ensure that targeted organizations can withstand attacks that might otherwise knock them offline for extended periods. This is not just about keeping a website up; it's about preserving the ability of these groups to fulfill their public-interest missions in the face of coordinated digital aggression.
A year of growth and evolving threats
Over the past year, Project Galileo has expanded significantly. The number of protected organizations grew by 50%, bringing the total to more than 1,500 across 111 countries. This growth is supported by partnerships with 40 civil society organizations that review and approve applicants. At the same time, the scale of attacks has intensified: there were five times as many cyberattacks against Project Galileo sites than in the previous year, totaling 13 billion attacks between August 2020 and March 2021 — an average of 53 million per day.
The project also received external recognition, being named a Spotlight Recipient by The Tech Spotlight at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for its contribution to digital public purpose — specifically around privacy, safety, and inclusion.
New tools for a remote-first world
As organizations moved online during the pandemic, the threat landscape shifted. In response, Project Galileo expanded its offerings to include Cloudflare Access and Cloudflare Gateway.
Cloudflare Access helps organizations secure internal applications — like knowledge bases or help desk platforms. Volunteers and staff authenticate using their identity provider (such as Google or Okta), and Cloudflare enforces rules set by the IT administrator before granting access. This ensures only authorized users reach sensitive systems.
Cloudflare Gateway, meanwhile, provides DNS-level filtering. It blocks malicious content, ransomware, and phishing attempts before they reach a user's browser — a crucial defense for organizations facing sophisticated, targeted attacks. Given the surge in malware, this offers a simple layer of protection for journalists, human rights groups, and civil society organizations that are frequent targets.
How organizations are using these tools
World University Service of Canada
WUSC works with the Canadian post-secondary community to resettle refugee youth. Ken Fraser, Deputy Director of IT and Digital Transformation, leads a team of five supporting staff worldwide. Previously, security tools only covered internally hosted applications, leaving externally hosted sites unprotected. Now, with Cloudflare, any site proxied through the network receives the same reporting, performance, and web application firewall features regardless of where it's hosted.
For internal systems, WUSC uses Cloudflare Access. All WordPress sites are protected by an Access policy that blocks anyone on the internet from reaching login pages, with only specific email addresses permitted through. Fraser notes this was simple to set up and provided an immediate security benefit.
Unbound, United States
Kansas City-based Unbound sponsors children, youth, elders, and families across 19 countries. John Dougherty, Director of Technology Services, applied to Project Galileo to improve the security of their public website and custom web applications used by staff spread across the globe.
Initially, Access was used to protect the admin side of the website. When COVID-19 forced a rapid shift to remote work in March 2020, the IT team had just one week to implement a solution. Now, more than 150 users securely access the internal ticketing system, help desk, and knowledge base from home. According to Dougherty, being able to rely on these services means more time and money can go toward direct support for families living in extreme poverty rather than worrying about data breaches or downtime.
New Brunswick Today, United States
New Brunswick Today has served the city of New Brunswick, NJ since 2011, covering community affairs, corruption, and local development. Head of digital strategy Justin Freid is no stranger to threats—"Our journalists have been targeted with physical and online threats"—given the sensitive nature of their reporting.
During the pandemic, the paper adopted Cloudflare Gateway to filter out malicious traffic and phishing attempts, routing traffic through the service with policies managed via Cloudflare's dashboard for their editors' devices. This provides peace of mind when handling source material that might contain malware. As Freid notes, knowing Cloudflare filters threats before they reach the device builds confidence for journalists while they investigate and publish stories.
Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline, United Kingdom
Switchboard, founded in 1974, is one of the UK's oldest telephone helplines, supporting around 1,500 unique service users each month. Over the years, they expanded from phone to email and real-time chat. When COVID-19 hit, digital communication grew from 30% to 55% of their interactions, according to Pete Hannam, who handles both volunteer duties and technical responsibilities.
Switchboard joined Project Galileo in May 2019 after a WordPress plugin vulnerability led to a hack. They previously had no visibility into traffic or threats. "Presenting an insecure platform is a huge breach of respect and professionalism," Hannam explains, particularly for an organization where trust is paramount. They quickly enabled Cloudflare SSL certificates to encrypt and authenticate their site, then deployed the web application firewall to block exploitation attempts in PHP code.
More recently, Switchboard added Cloudflare Gateway to automatically block viruses and phishing attempts. It serves as a first layer of defense for volunteers working remotely. "We have the exact same issues as large companies, possibly even more targeted due to the sensitivity of our work, with significantly fewer resources," Hannam notes. "Cloudflare's Project Galileo allows us access to these tools to keep our site reliable, secure and trustworthy."
Tracking the trends
To help researchers and civil society understand these attacks, Cloudflare launched the Project Galileo 7th Anniversary Radar Dashboard in September 2020. It offers insight into the types of threats these groups face, supporting better preparedness and best practices for safeguarding websites and internal data.
Adjusting with the times
Project Galileo’s work has not remained static. As global events continue to shift how organizations operate and maintain their digital platforms, the program has adapted its support model. The focus has evolved to offer assistance that is responsive to changing conditions rather than a fixed set of services.
Ongoing collaboration with civil society partners remains central to this approach. Through this interaction, the program refines its offerings to help organizations achieve three primary objectives:
- Maintain consistent online availability, even under challenging circumstances.
- Secure the internal tools and communication channels that support remote and distributed teams.
- Allow staff to dedicate their attention to their core mission of serving the public good, rather than on infrastructure defense.
These principles guide the roadmap for future project development. The goal is to provide practical products and support that directly address the operational realities facing civil society organizations today. By staying aligned with partner needs, the program intends to remain a reliable resource for protecting voices that rely on resilient web infrastructure.
