Cloudflare Wins CISA Contract for Registry and Authoritative Domain Name System (DNS) Services

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, has been awarded a $7.2 million contract from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to provide Registry and Authoritative DNS services to the .gov TLD (Top Level Domain).

“The Internet has made the United States government more accessible for constituents than ever before, whether they're applying for a passport, learning health and safety recommendations for their communities, or reaching out to a representative,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare. “Having a reliable and secure DNS for government agencies is critical to instill trust in all .gov activity, and working with us to achieve this is a testament to the reliability and security of the Cloudflare network.”

CISA is the nation’s risk advisor, working with partners to defend against today’s threats and collaborating to build more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future. CISA builds the nation’s capacity to defend against cyber attacks by providing cybersecurity tools, incident response capabilities, and assessment services to safeguard the Federal IT enterprise, state and local partners, and systems that support national critical functions.

DNS is a core Internet service that is foundational to the security of the applications that sit on top of it. CISA turned to Cloudflare to provide registry and DNS services to meet the need for highly available DNS services that enhance resilience and simplify security operations for .gov domain users. CISA makes .gov domains available at no cost to US-based government organizations, but it takes more than registering a domain to put it on the Internet. DNS services guide visitors to the site. The .gov TLD registry and DNS services are available to all bona fide U.S.-based government organizations.

With this contract, Cloudflare will provide managed name servers for the .gov zone and authoritative DNS hosting for .gov domain names. Cloudflare will support CISA’s goals:

• Reducing the attack surface of .gov-related infrastructure and government organizations
• Automating sensitive portions of DNS security management, setting DNS records that make it hard to successfully impersonate the government in email by default, and offering new features
• Gaining visibility to better detect and prevent certain DNS ecosystem issues instead of reacting to them

Cloudflare recently achieved FedRAMP moderate authorization and is available on the FedRAMP marketplace. Cloudflare provides security, performance, and reliability services through its global network to over 40 United States Federal Government agencies. In 2021, CISA began utilizing Cloudflare to deliver a protective DNS resolver solution for all Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies. Cloudflare is committed to supporting critical government functions, including the nation's election infrastructure. Through its Athenian Project, Cloudflare provides services for free to state, county, and local officials administering elections.