Cloudflare

The website security company’s “Athenian Project” provided protection against data theft and distributed denial of service, or DDoS attacks in the 2018 midterm elections to state and local government election websites, including those that contained information about voter registration, polling places or unofficial election-night results. Federal cybersecurity officials and industry experts alike have warned that these websites — which often reside on unsecured dot-com or dot-org domains — are potential prey for ransomware attacks that could disrupt the flow of information to voters on Election Day.

In 2020, Cloudflare is providing the service to 229 election websites in 28 states, the company said. The Athenian Project platform gives election administrators free access to many of the same tools Cloudflare’s enterprise customers use, including a web application firewall, multi-user account enablement, bot management and an “Under Attack” mode that results in additional scanning and user screening.