Cloudflare enhances cybersecurity in the US financial sector
Cloudflare, a connectivity cloud company, announced a partnership with the United States Department of Treasury and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) under the Department of Energy to improve the cyber resilience of the financial services industry by sharing an advanced threat intelligence feed through Cloudflare.
With this new offering, financial services institutions that are using Cloudflare Gateway now have privileged access to Custom Indicator Feeds that share threat indicators and enable direct action to be taken, to better defend against ransomware, phishing, and other threats.
Cloudflare’s team underscores the significant impact of cyberattacks on US financial institutions, particularly amid increased online banking and geopolitical tensions post-pandemic. Their Custom Indicator Feed democratises access to government threat intelligence, marking a pivotal step in collaboration between Cloudflare and the federal government to fortify critical institution security.
Cloudflare observed 41 billion HTTP DDoS attack requests targeting the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) industry in Q1 2024, a 57% year-over-year growth compared to Q1 2023. Sharing threat intel data across organisations thus far has been a manual process, with exchanges happening over email or industry Slack channels; there is then no streamlined way for organisations to take action on the intel received.
Tailored threat intelligence for financial institutions
This partnership with the Department of Treasury and PNNL will provide US financial services institutions with privileged access to advanced threat intelligence, available through Cloudflare. The feed collects advanced insights from the Treasury and federal government’s exclusive sources, enriched by Cloudflare’s own threat intelligence, gained from unique visibility across internet traffic. Financial institutions are able to integrate approved threat intelligence feeds directly into their Cloudflare dashboard and implement automated DNS filtering policies using Cloudflare Gateway, ensuring their employees are protected from malicious links and phishing attempts targeting financial services organisations.
Cloudflare’s network spans more than 320 cities, its widely used public DNS resolver, 1.1.1.1, is used around the world, and Cloudflare is used by nearly 20% of all websites – and so, Cloudflare routinely sees security threats and attacks by actors earlier than competitors. Cloudflare is the CISA chosen vendor for Protective DNS and federal agencies such as Treasury are leveraging Cloudflare to help protect its infrastructure.
Onboarding US-based financial institutions
Financial institutions recognised by the Department of Treasury and using Cloudflare Gateway can access the offering at no cost. The partnership provides a new security content category within Cloudflare’s Gateway DNS filtering policies. The company ensures privacy by offering a one-way feed of threat intel from Treasury to customers, with no sharing of financial data. Access includes threat signals and DNS filtering to safeguard against malicious links or phishing attempts. Financial institutions not using Cloudflare can contact them for access.
