Cloudflare, Inc., the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today announced that the Cloudflare One suite of Zero Trust security tools is available at no cost to at-risk public interest groups that are part of Cloudflare’s Project Galileo, as well as local and state election sites part of Cloudflare’s Athenian Project. These organizations will now have access to the comprehensive and deeply-integrated Zero Trust tools that have typically only been available to large enterprises and are used by over 10,000 customers today.

“Cloudflare is the only security provider ensuring that Zero Trust is accessible to those most in need – the vulnerable groups in our society, journalists, and nonprofits, as well as the sites that ensure we have trusted, free, and fair elections in the United States,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare. “These organizations face constant threats and need to be safe online to achieve their missions – and now they'll have access to the same security architecture that Fortune 500 companies are using.”

Zero Trust is a modern security model that ensures all traffic in and out of a business is verified and authorized, and requires strict identity verification for every person and device. This replaces the old model where once a device or person was in a network, it was assumed to be trusted and had access to anything within that network. The problem with that approach is that once an attacker gains access to the network, they have free rein over everything inside.