Cloudflare Offers Free Services to Government Agencies During Pandemic
Government websites have become critical infrastructure during the COVID-19 crisis, serving as the primary channel for health updates, unemployment benefits, and public safety information. But the dramatic shift to online interaction has put unprecedented strain on these systems. Cloudflare reports that government agencies have seen a 100% increase in traffic to their websites during the pandemic—and that surge has caused outages and accessibility problems across multiple jurisdictions.
The service disruptions aren't limited to traffic spikes. Government digital platforms have also faced cyberattacks during the crisis. Australia's MyGov welfare portal became slow and inaccessible for a period; while initially suspected to be a DDoS attack, the issue was actually caused by 95,000 legitimate requests for unemployment benefits after the government doubled those payments. In the U.S., agencies providing unemployment resources in states including New Jersey, New York, and Ohio crashed when newly laid-off workers flooded their sites.
Cloudflare has previously offered free protection to at-risk organizations through its Project Galileo initiative, and to election agencies via the Athenian Project. Since March 16, the company has seen a 40% increase in Project Galileo applications from organizations related to COVID-19 relief efforts. Now it is extending similar support to state and local government agencies worldwide.
Free COVID-19 Government Assistance Package
Through September 1, 2020, Cloudflare is providing a package of free services to state and local governments to help them manage both malicious attacks and unexpected legitimate traffic spikes. The offering includes:
- Business Level services: Unmetered DDoS mitigation, a web application firewall (WAF) with up to 25 custom rulesets, and the ability to upload custom SSL certificates.
- Rate limiting: The ability to limit, shape, or block traffic based on request rates per client IP address, cookie, authentication token, or other request attributes.
- Cloudflare for Teams: A suite of tools for securing remote workforces, including:
- Access: Secure, authenticate, and monitor user access to any domain, application, or path without requiring a VPN.
- Gateway: DNS-based filtering to protect users from phishing scams and malware across multiple locations.
Government agencies can apply through Cloudflare's website. The offer is also available to Cloudflare channel partners worldwide who want to support government agencies in their regions; partners should contact their Cloudflare Partner Representative or email [email protected].
The company is also removing usage caps for existing Cloudflare for Teams users and providing free onboarding sessions, following its earlier decision to make those products free until September 1 for all users. This broader assistance effort aims to keep both web infrastructure and internal government teams operational as the pandemic continues.
