Google and Facebook Offering New Protections in a Bid to Defend Democracy

By LTC Steven Howard, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Contributor, InCyberDefense

Google just released a free Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection platform called Project Shield in an attempt to protect news sites from attack. The company is now accepting applications from individual journalists, select political groups and news organizations.

Google’s service routes all website traffic, both good and bad, through its infrastructure in a service called “reverse proxy,” which is intended to filter out harmful traffic. In a blog post describing the new service, Google states, “Some Project Shield users see better website performance because of Project Shield’s caching features.”

Interested users can sign up for the service on Google’s Project Shield support page. However, users should note that Project Shield will not protect sites from outright hacking or malware attacks.

Facebook Adds New Programs to Combat Fake News Sources

Facebook has also recently implemented several programs to better protect the democratic process. Among them, Facebook now tells its users if a news source is reputable in an effort to combat the fake news epidemic that swept through its platform during the 2016 election cycle.