Cloudflare Publishes Fourth Annual Impact Report
Report details key milestones in helping protect democratic elections, protecting content creator rights, and supporting the open source community
Cloudflare announced that it has published its fourth annual Impact Report. The report describes the company's efforts to advance its mission–to help build a better Internet–as well as support global initiatives like protecting the open Internet and building an innovation economy. Highlights of this year's report include helping secure election and other critical infrastructure, advancements in encryption transparency, and tools to help content creators regain control from AI bots. The report also includes support for the development of Internet standards, open source projects, and the next generation of great startups.
“In 2024, we witnessed half of the world’s population eligible to vote against a backdrop of continued conflict and social unrest. Cloudflare worked to help protect critical voices and democratic processes, and ensure creators retained control of their work in an increasingly complex digital landscape,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare. “Whether it was helping to secure global elections, or helping content creators limit how AI bots access their content, I am proud of how the Cloudflare team supports needs bigger than all of us—delivering on our commitment to helping build a better, more open, and more secure Internet.”
Key milestones highlighted in Cloudflare’s 2024 Impact Report include:
- Onboarding 90+ political campaigns and 60+ local media sites in preparation for 2024 U.S. elections: Cloudflare provides free cyber security services to state and local governments' election websites, as well as political campaigns and other related entities through its partnership with Defending Digital Campaigns. Despite detecting a notable increase in DDoS attacks targeting political entities prior to the U.S. elections on November 5, Cloudflare did not observe those attacks causing any significant disruptions.
- Reporting on global elections with Cloudflare Radar: More than 70 countries held elections in 2024. Cloudflare monitors Internet traffic, attacks, and potential shutdowns during elections around the world through our free public resource Cloudflare Radar, and publishes those results to help civil society partners better understand what happens online throughout the electoral process.
- Empowering content creators to regain control in the age of AI: Cloudflare launched new tools to help create a transparent exchange between websites that want greater control over their content and the AI model providers that are in need of fresh data sources. Now, website owners can block, audit, and control how AI bots access their websites.
- Expanding access to affordable, powerful, and responsible AI, with GPUs in over 180 cities: AI applications built with Workers AI are deployed directly on our edge network, so they are instantly available and nearly infinitely scalable to users all over the world. Workers AI helps customers control costs and gain low-latency access to popular AI models thanks to AI-capable GPUs dispersed closer to users around the globe.
- Defending 2,900+ vulnerable Internet properties from an average of 95.8 million daily attacks, at no cost: Human rights defenders, journalists, humanitarian organizations, and the voices of political dissent are often vulnerable to cyber attacks. In collaboration with 54 civil society partners, Cloudflare’s Project Galileo—now in its tenth year—protects public interest groups from attacks intended to silence them online.
- Equipping the open source community with free services through Project Alexandria: Open source software is vital to the continued health of the Internet. Cloudflare introduced Project Alexandria to provide recurring annual credits and an expanded range of free services to help OSS projects not only survive, but thrive.
Overall, Cloudflare has provided more than $15 million in donated products and services in 2024 through these Impact programs.
Source: Cloudflare media announcement
