Cloudflare is one of the world's largest content delivery networks (CDNs). It's used by businesses, nonprofits, bloggers, and anyone else with an online presence to make their websites and apps fast and secure.
In 2017, Cloudflare created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of security and trust during elections. The company launched this project to ensure that voters can access election information and voter registration without any hassle.
At the time of launch, the company stated that its goal is to protect websites from DDoS attacks, SQL injection, and other malicious efforts aimed at undermining the integrity of elections.
Cloudflare says its goal is to help protect the most vulnerable voices online and critical institutions. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in September 2017 that voter registration records or public election websites in 21 states had been targeted by cyberattacks. Following this, Cloudflare decided to help ensure the smooth and secure conduct of elections by launching the Athenian Project.
Websites play a powerful role in elections, providing important information to people before, during, and after the election. Websites can also become targets for attacks and can face vulnerabilities due to their high traffic. Security and performance vulnerabilities can prevent citizens visiting election websites from accessing important information about where and when to vote. They will also affect anyone who visits the websites after the election to view the results.
How can websites be affected?
- Before the election: Security and performance issues may lead to website unavailability or the spread of false information about voter registration.
- During elections: Security and performance vulnerabilities can prevent citizens visiting election websites from accessing important information about where and when to vote.
- After the election: Citizens who want to see the results of the vote and receive updates in real time will be affected.
Election websites are vulnerable to security and performance issues. What are some of these risks?
- Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks – DDoS attacks are a very serious threat to any organization that relies on its website or online service as they can cause significant downtime. As you can imagine, this would really create a huge problem for the electoral process.
- Data Theft – Election websites are vulnerable to security breaches, such as SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and cross-site forgery requests. These breaches could lead to data theft, including voter data.
- Malicious Bots – Hackers can create bots that interfere with election websites by scraping content and taking over accounts, which in turn increases operational costs and causes data loss.
- Website availability – Election websites experience periods of high traffic creating a poor user experience — content on the site will load slowly or not at all.
Cloudflare's Athenian Project protects you from all of the above threats by providing you with the appropriate steps to protect voter data, keep websites online, and prevent the defacement of your website.
The company says that if you run a state or local election website in the United States, it recommends that you apply to join the new project. The Athenian Project is for websites that manage elections. This includes websites that provide information related to polling places, voter data, including voter registration or verification, or reporting election results.
The registration process is very easy and is done by simply filling out the form below:
Indicatively, the following cities are currently participating in the Athenian Project: San Francisco, Rhode Island, Alabama, North Carolina and Hawaii.
