I can't believe how many people are suggesting Cloudflare who:
1) Is backed by the U.S. Dept of Defense, NIST, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the EU (Horizon 2020 Program).
2) The main way people know about Cloudflare is that awful Verifying you are human message and 3-second redirect you see on some sites - which is my prompt to immediately leave the site.
Why would anyone want anything to do with slow as hell and government-backed Cloudflare?
Most if not all of Cloudflare's competitors have been around longer than they have. Their contracts with governments and militaries is why they're valuable, not that nobody knows how to offer a CDN, or other services they sell. They have plenty of competition, and I don't think they lead the market with any of their products.
This is why I love LLMs. Try using a search engine to find the answer to "how is Cloudflare backed by governments"?
On DuckDuckGo, the entire first page were Cloudflare results! Come on... don't they know what I'm asking?
Let's just get to the answer:
ollama run llama3
> how is Cloudflare backed by governments?
Cloudflare has partnerships with various government agencies around the world to help improve internet security, stability, and overall performance. Here are some examples:
1. *US Department of Defense (DoD): Cloudflare is a certified provider for the DoD's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC).
2. *UK Government*: Cloudflare is a partner with the UK Government's Cabinet Office, supporting their efforts to improve internet security and stability in the UK.
3. *European Union's (EU) Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA)*: Cloudflare collaborates with ENISA, the EU's cybersecurity agency, to help prevent and respond to cyber threats across Europe.
4. *Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)*: Cloudflare is a partner with ASD, Australia's premier cybersecurity agency, supporting their efforts to improve internet security and stability in Australia.
5. *Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE)*: Cloudflare collaborates with CSE, Canada's national cyber security authority, to help protect Canadian interests online.
These partnerships often involve:
1. *Security research*: Cloudflare works with government agencies to identify and mitigate emerging threats, such as DDoS attacks, malware, and other types of cyber attacks.
2. *Cybersecurity training*: Cloudflare provides training and education to government officials, security personnel, and industry professionals on best practices for cybersecurity and cloud-based services.
3. *Technology development*: Cloudflare collaborates with governments on developing new technologies and solutions to address specific cybersecurity challenges, such as combating online terrorism or protecting critical infrastructure.
4. *Incident response*: In the event of a significant cyber incident, Cloudflare works closely with government agencies to respond quickly and effectively, minimizing the impact on affected organizations.
These partnerships demonstrate the trust and confidence governments have in Cloudflare's ability to help protect their interests online. By working together, they can create safer, more secure, and more resilient internet ecosystems for everyone.
> how does Cloudflare partner with DoD? Answer in a single paragraph
Cloudflare partners with the US Department of Defense (DoD) through various initiatives, including Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), joint cybersecurity initiatives, research and development projects, training and education programs, incident response and recovery efforts, and market research and analysis. Specifically, Cloudflare collaborates with the DoD on threat hunting and cloud security solutions, develops AI-powered tools for detecting and responding to cyber threats, provides secure cloud storage and compute services tailored to the DoD's needs, offers training and education to DoD personnel on best practices for cybersecurity, cloud-based services, and threat hunting techniques, responds quickly and effectively in the event of significant cyber incidents, and analyzes emerging cybersecurity trends and threats to inform the DoD's security strategies and investments.
> how much does dod pay cloudflare
I couldn't find exact figures on how much the US Department of Defense (DoD) pays Cloudflare, as this information is likely classified or not publicly disclosed. However, I can provide some context:
1. *Cloudflare's revenue*: In 2020, Cloudflare reported $185 million in revenue, which was a 52% increase from 2019.
2. *Defense spending*: The DoD has a significant budget for cybersecurity and cloud services. For example, the DoD's 2022 budget request included $15.4 billion for "Cybersecurity" and $3.8 billion for "Cloud Computing Services".
3. *Cloudflare's defense contracts*: Cloudflare has secured several defense-related contracts with the DoD, including a $40 million contract in 2019 to provide cloud security services to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Another example is a $20 million contract in 2020 to develop an AI-powered threat detection system for the US Air Force.
I could go on...
What might be scarier is I learned this information from reading regular news articles maybe 5-6 years ago, so I've known for a long time that Cloudflare was vaguely involved with, or at least sold services to the U.S. federal government and military. But in 2024 it's very hard to find anything detailed through Google or DuckDuckGo, or even Wikipedia. You can find it on Cloudflare's website when they want to use it for marketing:
“Cloudflare has long served the most technical, security-aware agencies like the FBI and U.S Department of State,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare.
But I like that the LLM is able to really grab the information in a way search engines are getting worse at (through censorship and other algorithmic pressures).
1) Is backed by the U.S. Dept of Defense, NIST, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the EU (Horizon 2020 Program).
2) The main way people know about Cloudflare is that awful Verifying you are human message and 3-second redirect you see on some sites - which is my prompt to immediately leave the site.
Why would anyone want anything to do with slow as hell and government-backed Cloudflare?