- Free cyber tools for US critical infrastructure are no longer available
- The project was originally created after the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Lack of admission since then has resulted in the sunset of the project
A free cybersecurity service created to help protect critical infrastructure in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is quietly shut down.
The critical infrastructure defense project was pioneered by cloudflare, crowdstrike and ping identity, and allowed organizations in “vulnerable sectors” to access four months of cybersecurity services for free, including a security model for zero confidence to help us hospitals and water and power supplies to secure their networks, and identities.
The program also offered critical threat information to cyber security teams that were likely to be targeted.
Critical protection of the infrastructure shuts down
A spokesman for Crowdstrike explained that the project is closed as the use has tipped from the first threat levels experienced since the beginning of 2022.
The services offered by the trio of cyber security companies, “adapted to a period of initial increased threats and that its use has since disappeared,” the spokesman told NEXTGOV/FCW.
The end of the project could not come at a worse time, with the reports suggesting that the Trump administration may have put a break to counter Russian cyber operations, and NATO, who warned Russia, mapped out critical infrastructure including underwater internet cables.
When you try to access the critical infrastructure defense project, the site now redirects you to Cloudflare website.
After the recent turmoil in the Middle East, there is a clear opportunity for Iran to increase its cyber operations against the United States.
Iran has previously targeted critical infrastructure, including US water treatment plants on several occasions, indicating that the need for a free cyber security program for US critical infrastructure could still remain.
