Cloudflare Will Continue Operating in Russia

Amid a wave of sanctions and the mass withdrawal of companies from the Russian market, representatives of Cloudflare have announced that Russia “needs more access to the internet, not less,” and promised that Cloudflare will continue its operations there. According to the company’s leadership, halting services would only negatively impact people who need to stay connected with the rest of the world.

“We greatly appreciate the determination of many Ukrainians who are appealing to the IT sector to stop providing services in Russia. However, since Cloudflare provides access to a more open, private, and secure internet, we believe that a complete shutdown of Cloudflare services in Russia would be a mistake,” the official statement reads.

At the same time, the company has closed paid access to its network and systems in new regions under heavy sanctions, and has disconnected clients who have fallen under sanctions, as required by law.

“We have received several calls demanding that we stop all Cloudflare services in Russia. We carefully considered these requests and discussed them with government and private experts. After these consultations, we concluded that Russia needs more access to the internet, not less,” summarized Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.

Data Security Measures

Additionally, to protect customer data, Cloudflare has removed all encryption keys from data centers located in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, and has implemented its own Keyless SSL technology. This technology allows organizations to use a cloud service provider for SSL/TLS encryption without having to provide the master key. The Keyless SSL workflow is illustrated below.