Cloudflare’s fifth annual Impact Report, announced December 19, 2025, describes free cybersecurity and performance services for election offices, independent journalism, and other public-interest organizations. Its headline figures are substantial: more than 3,000 protected Internet properties across over 120 countries through Project Galileo, 441-plus election-related properties in 33 U.S. states through the Athenian Project in 2025, and billions of attacks blocked during separately defined reporting periods.
The numbers are Cloudflare’s own program metrics. They describe traffic filtered and organizations served—not independent estimates of election results, journalist safety, or the programs’ causal effects.
What the 2025 report covers
The report groups Cloudflare’s public-interest work into two principal programs and a newer set of controls for content publishers:
- Project Galileo: free protection for at-risk public-interest organizations, including journalists, human-rights defenders, and humanitarian groups.
- The Athenian Project: free security and performance services for state and local election websites in the United States.
- AI crawler controls: Bot Management and AI Crawl Control made available in free services for Galileo participants, alongside Cloudflare’s commitment to train news outlets on AI tools.
Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince characterized the work in the announcement as part of the company’s mission “to help build a better Internet.”
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Project Galileo: reach and threat volume
Who the program serves
Cloudflare’s current Impact overview lists more than 3,000 Internet properties in more than 120 countries and 57 civil-society partners for Project Galileo. These are Cloudflare program figures, and an Internet property is not necessarily the same thing as a separate organization or person.
What Cloudflare says it blocked
Cloudflare’s Radar Data Insights Team reported blocking 108.9 billion cyber threats against organizations protected by Project Galileo from May 1, 2024, through March 31, 2025. Over that 11-month window, the team calculated an average of nearly 325.2 million attacks per day.
The reporting window matters. These figures come from a June 12, 2025 Radar report and should not be combined with other averages in the December announcement. They measure malicious traffic identified and blocked by Cloudflare’s systems, rather than the number of successful breaches or a count of attacks across every public-interest organization.
The Athenian Project and election websites
Services and coverage in 2025
The Athenian Project provides free Cloudflare security and performance services to state and local election websites. Cloudflare’s current Impact page records 441-plus protected Internet properties in 33 states receiving those services in 2025.
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The 2024 U.S. DDoS figure
Cloudflare also reports blocking 200 million distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against U.S. state and local government election sites between September and November 2024. This is a U.S.-specific figure for that three-month election period; it is not a worldwide total and is not a count for all of 2025.
DDoS attacks attempt to overwhelm a website with traffic so legitimate visitors cannot reach it. Blocking them can help keep election information and online services available, but the reported total alone does not show how many sites would otherwise have gone offline, whether an attack changed voting operations, or how the result compares with providers not using Cloudflare.
How the programs differ
| Program or measure | Primary audience | Cloudflare-reported figure | Period and geography |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project Galileo reach | Journalists, human-rights defenders, humanitarian organizations, and other public-interest groups | 3,000+ Internet properties; 120+ countries; 57 civil-society partners | Current Impact overview accessed September 27, 2026 |
| Galileo threats blocked | Organizations protected by Project Galileo | 108.9 billion threats; nearly 325.2 million per day on average | May 1, 2024–March 31, 2025; Radar Data Insights Team report |
| Athenian Project coverage | State and local election websites | 441+ Internet properties; 33 states | 2025; current Impact overview accessed September 27, 2026 |
| Athenian Project DDoS blocking | U.S. state and local government election sites | 200 million DDoS attacks | September–November 2024; current Impact overview accessed September 27, 2026 |
What AI crawler controls mean for independent media
Cloudflare says it incorporated Bot Management and AI Crawl Control into free services for Project Galileo entities. The stated purpose is to give independent news sites more control over whether and how AI services access their content. Cloudflare also committed to training news outlets on AI tools.
These controls address access to web content; they do not by themselves establish licensing terms, payment for training data, attribution, or a particular publisher’s audience or revenue outcome. Each outlet still needs to decide which automated services it permits and configure rules appropriate to its publishing and legal policies.
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How to read the report’s numbers
Separate populations
Galileo statistics concern public-interest organizations protected by that program. Athenian figures concern government election websites. Neither population should be used as a proxy for the other.
Separate measures
“Protected Internet properties” and “states” describe program reach. “Threats” and “DDoS attacks blocked” describe traffic Cloudflare classified and stopped. A larger blocked-attack number can reflect more hostile traffic, broader monitoring, or both; it is not automatically a measure of greater real-world harm.
Separate dates
The 2024 election-site DDoS figure, the May 2024–March 2025 Galileo threat window, and the 2025 Athenian coverage figure are different periods. Cloudflare’s December 2025 announcement also cited other averages, including a 9.9 billion monthly figure for Galileo participants and 290 million attacks per day against independent news organizations in 2025. Those release figures refer to distinct populations and periods and should not be substituted for the Radar team’s 11-month totals.
What the report does—and does not—establish
- It documents Cloudflare’s provision of free services and reports the scale of participating properties, partner organizations, states, and blocked traffic.
- It shows that election websites and public-interest organizations faced substantial hostile traffic during the cited periods.
- It does not independently verify Cloudflare’s classifications, compare attack levels with unprotected sites, or demonstrate that the services changed election outcomes, prevented every compromise, or made journalists safe.
- It does not provide a universal measure of cyber risk for all elections, newsrooms, or nonprofits.
The Bottom Line
Cloudflare’s 2025 Impact Report presents a large, company-reported public-interest security effort: Project Galileo covers more than 3,000 properties in over 120 countries, while the Athenian Project served 441-plus election properties across 33 U.S. states in 2025. The associated attack totals are meaningful indicators of hostile traffic handled by Cloudflare, but their dates, geographies, populations, and definitions must remain separate—and they are not independent proof of election or journalism outcomes.
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