Noémie Elhadad is an American data scientist who is an associate professor of biomedical informatics at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. As of 2022, she serves as the chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her research considers machine learning in bioinformatics, natural language processing and medicine. == Early life and education == Elhadad studied computer software engineering at École nationale supérieure d'électronique, informatique, télécommunications, mathématique et mécanique de Bordeaux (ENSEIRB). She completed her doctoral research at Columbia University. She was based in the Department of Computer Science, where she developed patient-focused text summaries of clinical literature. == Research and career == Elhadad joined the faculty at the City College of New York. In 2007 she joined the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. She was made Chair of the Health Analytics Center at the Columbia Data Science Institute in 2013. Her research considers how clinical data, electronic health records and patient-generated data can enhance access to information for researchers, patients and physicians. She developed an artificial intelligence tool that supported patients in the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Elhadad is interested in using data to advance women's health. She led the Citizen Endo Project that looks to comprehensively describe how patients experience endometriosis. It was built using principles of citizen science, using patient testimonials from focus groups in New York City and data aggregation. She created the app, Phendo, which asks patients about their experience of the disease. The name Phendo is a portmanteau of phenotyping endometriosis. Elhadad was announced as chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in December 2022. == Selected publications == Caruana, Rich; Lou, Yin; Gehrke, Johannes; Koch, Paul; Sturm, Marc; Elhadad, Noemie (August 10, 2015). "Intelligible Models for HealthCare". Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 1721–1730. doi:10.1145/2783258.2788613. ISBN 9781450336642. S2CID 14190268. Chaitanya Shivade; Preethi Raghavan; Eric Fosler-Lussier; Peter J Embi; Noemie Elhadad; Stephen B Johnson; Albert M Lai (November 7, 2013). "A review of approaches to identifying patient phenotype cohorts using electronic health records". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 21 (2): 221–230. doi:10.1136/AMIAJNL-2013-001935. ISSN 1067-5027. PMC 3932460. PMID 24201027. Wikidata Q37598951. Shivade, Chaitanya; Raghavan, Preethi; Fosler-Lussier, Eric; Embi, Peter J; Elhadad, Noemie; Johnson, Stephen B; Lai, Albert M (March 2014). "A review of approaches to identifying patient phenotype cohorts using electronic health records". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 21 (2): 221–230. doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2013-001935. ISSN 1067-5027. PMC 3932460. PMID 24201027. == Personal life == Elhadad suffers from endometriosis.
Excalidraw
Excalidraw is an open-source, web-based virtual whiteboard and diagramming application. It is used to create diagrams, wireframes, and sketches within a web browser without requiring account registration. The software features a characteristic hand-drawn visual style and supports real-time multi-user collaboration using client-side end-to-end encryption. Excalidraw is released under the MIT License and is maintained by Excalidraw s.r.o., a company based in Brno, Czech Republic. == History == Excalidraw was created on 1 January 2020 by Christopher Chedeau, a software engineer at Meta Platforms. Chedeau, who previously co-created React Native and Prettier, initially developed the application as a personal project before registering the domain on 3 January 2020. Within its first months, the project attracted open-source contributors who assisted in expanding its features and rewriting the codebase into TypeScript and React. By early 2021, day-to-day operations moved to Czech developers David Luzar and Milos Vetesnik. In May 2021, the team incorporated Excalidraw s.r.o. in Brno and launched a commercial cloud-based version named Excalidraw+ to fund the open-source project's development. By May 2026, the main open-source repository on GitHub had accumulated over 123,000 stars. == Features and architecture == The application provides an infinite canvas for geometric shapes, lines, arrows, text, and freehand drawing. Its visual presentation relies on Rough.js, a JavaScript graphics library that alters standard vector paths to mimic irregular, hand-drawn lines. Excalidraw operates as a Progressive web application (PWA), allowing local installation and offline usage, saving data natively to local browser storage. Files use a native, JSON-based extension format (.excalidraw), and canvases can be exported to PNG or SVG formats. Real-time collaboration sessions are executed using Socket.IO via a relay server. Data transmission uses the browser's native Web Cryptography API to achieve end-to-end encryption. A symmetric AES key is generated on the client side and appended to the sharing URL as a fragment identifier (following the # character). Because web browsers do not transmit URL fragments to HTTP servers, the data remains unreadable to the distribution server. == Ecosystem == Excalidraw is distributed as an npm package, allowing third-party developers to embed the whiteboard component directly into external React web applications. Community-developed extensions integrate the application's file format into text editors and note-taking systems, including Visual Studio Code and Obsidian. The platform also has native integrations in commercial platforms such as Notion and HackerRank. == Reception == Google's developer relations team published a technical case study on Excalidraw as a reference implementation for Progressive Web Apps. The analysis highlighted the software's adoption of advanced web platform capabilities, specifically its utilization of the File System Access API and native Clipboard API to replicate desktop software behavior within a web browser environment.
List of broadband over power line deployments
This is a list of broadband over power line deployments. In this sense, "broadband" usually refers to Internet access using power line communication technology. == BPL pilot projects - 1st Gen (UPA) == === Inactive pilot projects === North America: United States: The United Telecom Council publishes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-mandated BPL Interference Resolution website, which provides a list of all BPL deployments in the US. Canada: Quebec: As of 2005, PLC communication technology developed by Ariane Controls is being installed inside and outside existing buildings to control lights and other energy-hungry devices. The cheap devices allow energy consumption to be better managed, and so save much energy and bring a clear return on investment. Western Europe: Sweden: Vattenfall is using PLC technology at 1200 baud for automatic meter reading based on an Iskraemeco product. Central and Eastern Europe, and Eurasia: Russian Federation: Electro-com has deployed widely BPL/PLC technology and offers internet access service in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, Kaluga and Rostov-on-Don, planning to extend coverage to main Russian cities. Currently the company does not provide other services, though plans to start providing telephone, and television services someday. Base equipment is a DefiDev modem with a DS2 chipset. The company had 35,000 subscribers and an annual growth of 15-20%. The company has, however, halted operations in Moscow in September, 2008, having sold its client network to an IDSL internet provider. Romania: In January, 2006, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology introduced a PLC trial in the rural locality of Band, Mureș County, offering phone and broadband internet access for €7 per month. The technology was introduced to 50 households. Montenegro: In March, 2002, the Internet Crna Gora biggest internet provider in Montenegro launched a pilot project in town of Cetinje. Serbia: In August 2002, the Star Engineering from Niš launched a pilot project to show a completely new way to access the Internet, which is a new in that time in most countries around the world. Hungary: The first powerline service in Hungary was realized in September, 2003, in the Riverside apartment house in Budapest by 23Vnet Ltd. The PLC equipment was supplied by ASCOM Powerline. After four months the service was counting 100 users from 450 apartment owners. The bandwidth is 4.5 Mbit/s. Asia, Pacific, and Oceania: Indonesia: PT Kejora Gemilang Internusa "KEJORA", under their banner PLANET BROADBAND, is currently rolling out broadband over power line, with over 300,000 homes expected to be enabled by August 2010. PT. Kejora Gemilang Internusa signed an 8-year Joint Venture concession agreement with ICON+ a division of PT. Perusahaan Listrik Negara (Indonesia electricity company). Under the terms of the agreement PLAnet Broadband are to supply BPL/PLC to Jakarta West and West Java. Another company, PT. Broadband Powerline Indonesia, has been developing broadband over power line in apartment buildings since 2006. PT. BPI also produces data couplers to make broadband over powerline possible in three phases (R, S, T) with a single master. India : In India IIIT Allahabad has completed a project in co-operation with Corinex Communications Canada to implement a prototype of BPL for University campus and nearby villages. Africa and the Middle East: Egypt: The Engineering Office for Integrated Projects (EOIP) has deployed PLC technology widely in Alexandria, Fayed, and Tanta. Based on a locally developed system, the company provides AMR for electricity utilities. Currently, the company has about 70,000 subscribers. South Africa: Goal Technology Solutions (GTS) trialled the technology and is offering service in the suburbs of Pretoria, and plans to extend it to other areas. The tests were done with Mitsubishi equipment using a DS2 chipset, and the company claims a maximum throughput of 90 Mbit/s although initially only "512 Kbits/s ADSL equivalent speeds" are available. Now it uses DefiDev's equipment, and according to GTS's website, it will expand available bandwidth up to 5-20 Mbit/s. Ghana: Cactel Communications, Ltd. successfully deployed an MV solution pilot project in the Graphic Communications Group in Accra in June, 2005. A Cactel Remote Energy Management System (REMS) pilot project for the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is running a 40-user pilot project at the University of Ghana in Legon. The current project combines fiber, radio link, Wi-Fi and PLC to provide broadband internet access and telephony. It showcases the interoperability of PLC technology and the company's expertise in emerging market design and deployment. Cactel hopes to deploy nationally, and is in deliberations with the national stakeholders and with Ghana's Ministry of Communications (MoC). AllTerra Communications successfully implemented a pilot test of broadband over power lines in Akosombo. In partnership with VRA, this test involves demonstrating transmission of broadband from medium to low voltage signals. AllTerra is working with VRA to expand the pilot project to include essential grid management utilities that will help balance and manage the current electricity transmission throughout their various substations. Using IT as a catalyst for economic development, AllTerra is expanding into numerous areas throughout Ghana. Vobiss Solutions Ltd successfully implemented a Hybrid Fibre BPL pilot network within EMEFS Hillview Estate in collaboration with ECG. Saudi Arabia: ElectroNet has been working with the Saudi Electric Company since 2005 on a pilot project using broadband over power lines over medium voltage cables and linking into low voltage distribution within a shopping mall. The pilot project also integrates automatic meter readers. Powerlines Communications Co. Ltd. implemented an AMR pilot project for Saudi Electricity Company in 2006. The project was located in the city of Jeddah on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Digital KWh meters were installed in parallel with analog KWh meters. Readings taken by the Saudi Electricity Company showed variations of less than 1%. A BPL pilot project was included. Saudi Arabian Computer Management Consultants (SACMAC) has signed a deal to become an official system integrator and distributor for Mitsubishi PLC. It is expected to become a great success, because the existing broadband service, monopolized by the Saudi Telecom Company, is expensive and has poor customer service (some clients report that company techs arrive months after ordering). SACMAC has declined to talk about specifics of availability and price but says it will start rolling out the service in a few months (as of May 2006) and its price will be lower than current broadband providers. === Concluded pilot projects === The following pilot projects have ended: Australia, Tasmania: In November 2007, electricity retailer Aurora Energy ended its involvement with BPL and announced it was switching to Optical Fiber. This ended their commercial trial begun in September 2005, offering BPL services to 500 homes in the suburb of Tolmans Hill near Hobart, which had followed a successful technological trial earlier that year. Portugal ended BPL/PLC deployments in the country in October 2006, reportedly for economic reasons., Russian Federation: In September 2008, Russia's only BPL provider Electro-com ended deployments in Moscow for economic reasons. Spain: In May 2007 Iberdrola and Endesa (the main power companies in Spain) ended their projects to deploy PLC. United States: As of July 2010, the City of Manassas, VA has shut down their BPL deployment, which was the largest in the country. As of April 2007, Motorola has shuttered its Powerline LV Access BPL and reportedly plans to re-purpose the technology to a new system called Powerline MU, which is for use within multiple-unit dwellings. Motorola's system uses only residential-side low-voltage power lines for transmission to reduce the antenna effect, and successfully demonstrated frequency-notching for reduced potential for interference over the Amperion Inc. and Current Technologies LLC systems. Motorola invited the American Radio Relay League to participate with these tests, and even installed the Motorola system at their headquarters. Preliminary results were very positive with regard to interference, because the Motorola system does not use BPL on the powerlines leading up to the neighborhood. The BPL carrier is only used for the last leg of the trip from the pole to the house, and gets the signal to the pole via radio. This limits the interference to the area surrounding the last leg to the house. === Dismantled pilot projects === The following other BPL trials in the US are dismantled as of May 2008:
Social television
Social television is the union of television and social media. Millions of people now share their TV experience with other viewers on social media such as Twitter and Facebook using smartphones and tablets. TV networks and rights holders are increasingly sharing video clips on social platforms to monetise engagement and drive tune-in. The social TV market covers the technologies that support communication and social interaction around TV as well as companies that study television-related social behavior and measure social media activities tied to specific TV broadcasts – many of which have attracted significant investment from established media and technology companies. The market is also seeing numerous tie-ups between broadcasters and social networking players such as Twitter and Facebook. The market is expected to be worth $256bn by 2017. Social TV was named one of the 10 most important emerging technologies by the MIT Technology Review on Social TV in 2010. And in 2011, David Rowan, the editor of Wired magazine, named Social TV at number three of six in his peek into 2011 and what tech trends to expect to get traction. Ynon Kreiz, CEO of the Endemol Group told the audience at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in January 2011: "Everyone says that social television will be big. I think it's not going to be big—it's going to be huge". Much of the investment in the earlier years of social TV went into standalone social TV apps. The industry believed these apps would provide an appealing and complimentary consumer experience which could then be monetized with ads. These apps featured TV listings, check-ins, stickers and synchronised second-screen content but struggled to attract users away from Twitter and Facebook. Most of these companies have since gone out of business or been acquired amid a wave of consolidation and the market has instead focused on the activities of the social media channels themselves – such as Twitter Amplify, Facebook Suggested Videos and Snapchat Discover – and the technologies that support them. == Twitter == Twitter and Facebook are both helping users connect around media, which can provoke strong debate and engagement. Both social platforms want to be the 'digital watercooler' and host conversation around TV because the engagement and data about what media people consume can then be used to generate advertising revenue. As an open platform, conversation on Twitter is closely aligned with real-time events. In May 2013, it launched Twitter Amplify – an advertising product for media and consumer brands. With Amplify, Twitter runs video highlights from major live broadcasts, with advertisers' names and messages playing before the clip. By February 2014, all four major U.S. TV networks had signed up to the Amplify program, bringing a variety of premium TV content onto the social platform in the form of in-tweet real-time video clips. In June 2014, Twitter acquired its Twitter Amplify partner in the U.S. SnappyTV, a company that was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program. Twitter continues to rely on Grabyo, which has also struck numerous deals with some of the largest broadcasters and rights holders in Europe and North America to share video content across Facebook and Twitter. == Facebook == Facebook made significant changes to its platform in 2014 including updates to its algorithm to enhance how it serves video in users' feeds. It also launched video autoplay to get users to watch the videos in their feeds. It rapidly surpassed Twitter and by the end of 2014 it was enjoying three billion video views a day on its platform and had announced a partnership with the NFL, one of Twitter's most active Twitter Amplify partners. In April 2015, at its F8 Developer Conference, it revealed it was working with Grabyo among other technology partners to bring video onto its platform. Then in July it announced it would be launching Facebook Suggested Videos, bringing related videos and ads to anyone that clicks on a video – a move that not only competed with Twitter's commercial video offering but also put it in direct competition with YouTube. == TV Time == TV Time is a television dedicated social network that allows users to keep track of the television series they watch, as well as films. It also allows them to express their reaction to the media they have seen with episode specific voting for favorite characters and emotional reaction to episodes, as well as commenting in episode restrictive pages. This way users are able to avoid spoilers while also finding a precise audience and community for each of their interactions, as opposed to bigger, non-television dedicated social medias such as Facebook and Twitter where the likelihood of unintentionally reading spoilers is much higher. TV Time offers an analytics service called "TVLytics" where the votes and reactions collected from users can be studied for research and television production purposes. == Advertising == According to Businessinsider.com, there are variety of applications for social TV, including support for TV ad sales, optimizing TV ad buys, making ad buys more efficient, as a complement to audience measurement, and eventually, audience forecasting and real-time optimization. Social TV data can ease access to focus groups and may create a positive feedback loop for generating ultra-sticky TV programming and multi-screen ad campaigns. == In numbers == Viewers share their TV experience on social media in real-time as events unfold: between 88-100m Facebook users login to the platform during the primetime hours of 8pm – 11pm in the US. The volume of social media engagement in TV is also rising – according to Nielsen SocialGuide, there was a 38% increase in tweets about TV in 2013 to 263m. For the 2014 Super Bowl, Twitter reported that a record 24.9 million tweets about the game were sent during the telecast, peaking at 381,605 tweets per minute. Facebook reported that 50 million people discussed the Super Bowl, generating 185 million interactions. The 2014 Oscars generated 5m tweets, viewed by an audience of 37m unique Twitter users and delivering 3.3bn impressions globally as conversation and key moments were shared virally across the platform. In 2014 the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), hosts of Wimbledon, used Grabyo to share video content across social. The videos were viewed 3.5 million times across Facebook and Twitter. In partnered with Grabyo again in 2015 and the videos generated over 48 million views across Facebook and Twitter. == Television shows with social integration == Here are some examples of how TV executives are integrating social elements with TV shows: C-SPAN streamed tweets from US Senators and Representatives during the quorum call The Voice had the judges of the program tweet during the show and the posts scrolls on the bottom of the screen. The use of Twitter also led to an increase in viewers. "Glee" Entertainment Weekly created a second screen viewing platform for the Glee season 3 premiere. == Related publications == Erika Jonietz. "Making TV Social, Virtually" MIT Technology Review. (January 11, 2010) AmigoTV (Alcatel-Lucent; Coppens et al.) – 2004 www.ist-ipmedianet.org/Alcatel_EuroiTV2004_AmigoTV_short_paper_S4-2.pdf Nextream (MIT Media Lab, Martin et al.) – 2010 Social Interactive Television: Immersive Shared Experiences and Perspectives (P. Cesar, D. Geerts, and K. Chorianopoulos (eds.)) – 2009 Social TV and the Emergence of Interactive TV – Multimedia Research Group – November 2010 Interactive Social TV on Service Oriented Environments: Challenges and Enablers (May 2011) == Systems == Boxee – acquired by Samsung GetGlue – acquired by i.TV Grabyo KIT digital Miso TV Tank Top TV WiO Xbox Live
Defence Information Infrastructure
Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) is a secure military network owned by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence MOD. It is used by all branches of the armed forces, including the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force as well as MOD civil servants. It reaches to deployed bases and ships at sea, but not to aircraft in flight. In 2000, the MOD began to plan the systems replacement project. In March 2005, the MOD gave a contract to the Atlas Consortium, with EDS as prime contractor, for installation and management over 10 years. That has developed into a consortium made up of DXC Technology (formerly EDS), Fujitsu, Airbus Defence and Space (formerly EADS Defence & Security) and CGI (formerly Logica). Starting in May 2016, MOD users of DII begin to migrate to the New Style of IT within the defence to be known as MODNET; again supported by ATLAS. == Overview == DII supports 2,000 MOD sites with some 150,000 terminals (desktops and laptops) and 300,000 user accounts. It is designed to offer a high level of resilience, flexibility, and security in the provision of connectivity from ‘business space to battlespace’ in MOD offices in the UK, bases overseas, at sea, and on the front line. It aims to rationalise and improve IT provision for the defence sector in the 21st century; involving a major culture change for MOD users and their ways of working through a structure of shared working areas with controlled security and access. It should provide a records management system and search facility together with a range of office services. It hosts several hundred COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and bespoke MOD applications from a range of suppliers judged to meet the required security standards. The network handles alphanumeric data, graphics, and video. The system carries information from Restricted to above-Secret levels, but users are able to see only the data and applications for which they are authorised. == Incremental approach == In order to de-risk the programme Atlas and the MOD took an incremental approach to the development and implementation of DII, with a separate contract for each increment. The extended timeline allowed the MOD flexibility in defining its requirements. Increment 1: Contract awarded March 2005. This covered 70,000 user access devices (UADs) and 200,000 user accounts in the Restricted and Secret domains in 680 fixed locations. Increment 2a: Contract awarded December 2006. This was for an additional 44,000 UADs and 58,000 user accounts in the Restricted and Secret domains, again in fixed locations. Increment 2b: Contract awarded September 2007: This extended DII(F) into the deployed environment with the provision of UADs to support land and maritime deployed operations. Increment 2c: Signed in January 2009. This extended the DII footprint into the above-Secret domain to support a number of key operations and intelligence initiatives. Increment 3a: Contract awarded January 2010. Atlas provided 42,000 UADs operating in the Restricted and Secret domains to the remaining MOD fixed sites. This supported some 60,000 personnel, notably within the RAF, at Joint Helicopter Command and other MOD locations. Increment 3a received an MOD Chief of Defence Materiel commendation. == Costs and transparency == The Ministry of Defence informed Parliament the system would cost £2.3bn, even though it knew the cost would be at least £5.8bn. By 2008 the programme was running at least 18 months late; had delivered only 29,000 of a contracted 63,000 terminals; and had delivered none of the contracted Secret capability. In January 2010 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence announced that the Ministry of Defence had authorised DII increment 3a at a cost of around £540 million to provide 42,000 terminals within the RAF and at Joint Helicopter Command. He stated that the project would deliver "benefits" worth over £1.6 billion over the 10 years of the contract. That year the project was scheduled to cost at least £7bn, however, the UK government said it might attempt to reduce this sum. By 2014 the rollout of all UK terminals was complete and a refresh of the original desktops and printers to new hardware underway. The overseas rollout was coming to an end and well over half the fleet, including aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, equipped. The final part of Secret capability deployment was scheduled to complete in summer of 2014.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc., is an American technology company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that provides a range of internet services, including content delivery network (CDN) services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and ICANN-accredited domain registration. The company's services act primarily as a reverse proxy between website visitors and a customer's hosting provider, improving performance and protecting against malicious traffic. Cloudflare was founded in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019 under the ticker symbol NET. Cloudflare has since expanded its offerings to include edge computing through its Workers platform, a public DNS resolver (1.1.1.1), and a VPN-like service known as WARP. In recent years, the company has integrated artificial intelligence into its infrastructure, acquiring companies such as Replicate and launching tools to manage AI bots and scrapers. According to W3Techs, Cloudflare is used by approximately 21.3% of all websites on the Internet as of January 2026. The company has been the subject of controversy regarding its policy of content neutrality. While Cloudflare executives have historically advocated for remaining a neutral infrastructure provider, the company has terminated services for specific high-profile websites associated with hate speech and violence, including The Daily Stormer, 8chan, and Kiwi Farms, following significant public pressure. Cloudflare has also faced criticism and litigation regarding copyright infringement by websites using its services, notably losing a lawsuit against Japanese publishers in 2025. The company experienced significant global outages in late 2025 which disrupted services for major platforms internationally. == History == Cloudflare was founded on July 26, 2009, by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. Prince and Holloway had previously collaborated on Project Honey Pot, a product of Unspam Technologies that partly inspired the basis of Cloudflare. In 2009, the company was venture-capital funded. On August 15, 2019, Cloudflare submitted its S-1 filing for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock ticker NET. It opened for public trading on September 13, 2019, at $15 per share. According to the company, the name 'Cloudflare' was chosen, over the initial 'WebWall', because it best described what they were trying to do: build a "firewall in the cloud." In 2020, Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn was named president. Cloudflare has acquired web-services and security companies, including StopTheHacker (February 2014), CryptoSeal (June 2014), Eager Platform Co. (December 2016), Neumob (November 2017), S2 Systems (January 2020), Linc (December 2020), Zaraz (December 2021), Vectrix (February 2022), Area 1 Security (February 2022), Nefeli Networks (March 2024), BastionZero (May 2024), and Kivera (October 2024). Replicate (November 2025), and Human Native (January 2026). Since at least 2017, Cloudflare has used a wall of lava lamps at its San Francisco headquarters as a source of randomness for encryption keys, alongside double pendulums at its London offices and a Geiger counter at its Singapore offices. The lava lamp installation implements the Lavarand method, where a camera transforms the unpredictable shapes of the "lava" blobs into a digital image. In Q4 2022, Cloudflare provided paid services to 162,086 customers. In October 2024, Cloudflare won a lawsuit against patent troll Sable Networks. Sable paid Cloudflare $225,000, granted it a royalty-free license to its patent portfolio, and dedicated its patents to the public by abandoning its patent rights. In November 2025, it was announced Cloudflare had agreed to acquire Replicate, a San Francisco–based platform that enables software developers to run, fine-tune, and deploy open-source machine-learning models via an API without managing infrastructure. In January 2026, Cloudflare released an analysis regarding BGP routing leaks observed from the Venezuelan state-owned ISP CANTV (AS8048), which occurred on January 2 coincides with the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. While some security researchers had speculated that the outages were linked to U.S. cyber operations, Cloudflare's data indicated that the anomalies were consistent with a pattern of "insufficient routing export and import policies" by the ISP rather than malicious external interference. In January 2026, Cloudflare acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace that brokers transactions between developers and content creators, for an undisclosed amount. On January 16, 2026, Cloudflare acquired The Astro Technology Company, the developers behind the open-source web framework Astro. In May 2026, Cloudflare announced the elimination of approximately 1,100 positions, around 20 percent of its workforce, in a restructuring the company attributed to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The announcement coincided with the company's first-quarter 2026 earnings, which reported a record $639.8 million in quarterly revenue, a 34 percent year-over-year increase. CEO Matthew Prince stated the cuts were not driven by performance concerns but reflected roles made obsolete by AI, and that Cloudflare expected to employ more people by the end of 2027 than at any point during 2026. == Products == Cloudflare provides network and security products for consumers and businesses, utilizing edge computing, reverse proxies for web traffic, data center interconnects, and a content distribution network to serve content across its network of servers. It supports transport layer protocols TCP, UDP, QUIC, and many application layer protocols such as DNS over HTTPS, SMTP, and HTTP/2 with support for HTTP/2 Server Push. As of 2023, Cloudflare handles an average of 45 million HTTP requests per second. As of 2024, Cloudflare servers are powered by AMD EPYC 9684X processors. Cloudflare also provides analysis and reports on large-scale outages, including Verizon's October 2024 outage. === Artificial intelligence === In 2023, Cloudflare launched "Workers AI", a framework allowing for use of Nvidia GPU's within Cloudflare's network. In 2024, Cloudflare launched a tool that prevents bots from scraping websites. To build automatic bot detector models, the company analyzed "AI" bots and crawler traffic. The company also launched an "AI" assistant to generate charts based on queries by leveraging "Workers AI". Cloudflare announced plans in September 2024 to launch a marketplace where website owners can sell "AI" model providers access to scrape their site's content. In March 2025, Cloudflare announced a new feature called "AI Labyrinth", which combats unauthorized "AI" data scraping by serving fake "AI"-generated content to LLM bots. In July, the company rolled out a permission-based setting to allow websites to automatically block online bots from scraping data and content. Cloudflare released AutoRAG into beta in 2025. AutoRAG (retrieval augmented generation) creates a vector database of a website's unstructured content to identify relationships between concepts. It is part of an initiative with Microsoft, alongside their NLWeb standard, to make websites easier for people and automated systems to query. Cloudflare and GoDaddy partnered in April 2026 to enable AI Crawl Control features on GoDaddy hosted websites. This would allow site owners to decide how AI bot crawlers interact with their content. === DDoS mitigation === Cloudflare provides free and paid DDoS mitigation services that protect customers from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Cloudflare received media attention in June 2011 for providing DDoS mitigation for the website of LulzSec, a black hat hacking group. In March 2013, The Spamhaus Project was targeted by a DDoS attack that Cloudflare reported exceeded 300 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). Patrick Gilmore, of Akamai, stated that at the time it was "the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet". While trying to defend Spamhaus against the DDoS attacks, Cloudflare ended up being attacked as well; Google and other companies eventually came to Spamhaus' defense and helped it to absorb the unprecedented amount of attack traffic. In 2014, Cloudflare began providing free DDoS mitigation for artists, activists, journalists, and human rights groups under the name "Project Galileo". In 2017, it extended the service to electoral infrastructure and political campaigns under the name "Athenian Project". By 2025, more than 2,900 users and organizations were participating in Project Galileo, including 31 US states. In February 2014, Cloudflare claimed to have mitigated an NTP reflection attack against an unnamed European customer, which it stated peaked at 400 Gbit/s. In November 2014, it reported a 500 Gbit/s DDoS attack in Hong Kong. In July 2021, the company claimed to have absorbed a DDoS atta
Information security
Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data or the unlawful use, disclosure, disruption, deletion, corruption, modification, inspection, recording, or devaluation of information. It also involves actions intended to reduce the adverse impacts of such incidents. Protected information may take any form, e.g., electronic or physical, tangible (e.g., paperwork), or intangible (e.g., knowledge). Information security's primary focus is the balanced protection of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability (known as the CIA triad, unrelated to the US government organization) while maintaining a focus on efficient policy implementation, all without hampering organization productivity. This is largely achieved through a structured risk management process. To standardize this discipline, academics and professionals collaborate to offer guidance, policies, and industry standards on passwords, antivirus software, firewalls, encryption software, legal liability, security awareness and training, and so forth. This standardization may be further driven by a wide variety of laws and regulations that affect how data is accessed, processed, stored, transferred, and destroyed. While paper-based business operations are still prevalent, requiring their own set of information security practices, enterprise digital initiatives are increasingly being emphasized, with information assurance now typically being dealt with by information technology (IT) security specialists. These specialists apply information security to technology (most often some form of computer system). IT security specialists are almost always found in any major enterprise/establishment due to the nature and value of the data within larger businesses. They are responsible for keeping all of the technology within the company secure from malicious attacks that often attempt to acquire critical private information or gain control of the internal systems. There are many specialist roles in Information Security including securing networks and allied infrastructure, securing applications and databases, security testing, information systems auditing, business continuity planning, electronic record discovery, and digital forensics. == Standards == Information security standards are guidelines generally outlined in published materials that aim to protect a user's or an organization's cyber environment from threats. This environment includes the users themselves, hardware such as devices and networks, software such as applications or services, and any information in storage or transit. These standards comprise security concepts, technologies, and guidelines to deal with an adverse event. They may also include assessment criteria and certification for organizations implementing a minimum level of security. These standards are developed by various international and national bodies to prevent or mitigate cyber-attacks, ensure consistency among developers, and establish a minimum standard in industries susceptible to an attack. The ISO/IEC 27000 family, published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), provides information about the guidelines and requirements for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). The Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408) provides guidelines on evaluating and certifying the security of a system. The IEC 62443 establishes security standards for automation and control systems. Similarly, the ISO/SAE 21434, ETSI EN 303 645, and EN 18031 provide standards for road vehicles, the Internet of Things, and radio-based systems respectively. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) is a set of guidelines developed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to help organizations with risk management. NIST also publishes various Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and Special Publications. The United Kingdom has introduced Cyber Essentials, which is a certification scheme to protect organizations against common security threats. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes the Essential Eight mitigation strategies. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) regulates handling of cardholder data in order to reduce credit card fraud. UL has published standards related to specific industries such as UL 2900-2-3 for security and life safety signaling systems and UL-2900-2-1 for healthcare and wellness systems. == Threats == Information security threats come in many different forms. Some of the most common threats today are software attacks, theft of intellectual property, theft of identity, theft of equipment or information, sabotage, and information extortion. Viruses, worms, phishing attacks, and Trojan horses are a few common examples of software attacks. The theft of intellectual property has also been an extensive issue for many businesses. Identity theft is the attempt to act as someone else usually to obtain that person's personal information or to take advantage of their access to vital information through social engineering. Sabotage usually consists of the destruction of an organization's website in an attempt to cause loss of confidence on the part of its customers. Information extortion consists of theft of a company's property or information as an attempt to receive a payment in exchange for returning the information or property back to its owner, as with ransomware. One of the most functional precautions against these attacks is to conduct periodical user awareness. Governments, military, corporations, financial institutions, hospitals, non-profit organizations, and private businesses amass a great deal of confidential information about their employees, customers, products, research, and financial status. Should confidential information about a business's customers or finances or new product line fall into the hands of a competitor or hacker, a business and its customers could suffer widespread, irreparable financial loss, as well as damage to the company's reputation. From a business perspective, information security must be balanced against cost; the Gordon-Loeb Model provides a mathematical economic approach for addressing this concern. For the individual, information security has a significant effect on privacy, which is viewed very differently in various cultures. == History == Since the early days of communication, diplomats and military commanders understood that it was necessary to provide some mechanism to protect the confidentiality of correspondence and to have some means of detecting tampering. Julius Caesar is credited with the invention of the Caesar cipher c. 50 B.C., which was created in order to prevent his secret messages from being read should a message fall into the wrong hands. However, for the most part protection was achieved through the application of procedural handling controls. Sensitive information was marked up to indicate that it should be protected and transported by trusted persons, guarded and stored in a secure environment or strong box. As postal services expanded, governments created official organizations to intercept, decipher, read, and reseal letters (e.g., the U.K.'s Secret Office, founded in 1653). In the mid-nineteenth century more complex classification systems were developed to allow governments to manage their information according to the degree of sensitivity. For example, the British Government codified this, to some extent, with the publication of the Official Secrets Act in 1889. Section 1 of the law concerned espionage and unlawful disclosures of information, while Section 2 dealt with breaches of official trust. A public interest defense was soon added to defend disclosures in the interest of the state. A similar law was passed in India in 1889, The Indian Official Secrets Act, which was associated with the British colonial era and used to crack down on newspapers that opposed the Raj's policies. A newer version was passed in 1923 that extended to all matters of confidential or secret information for governance. By the time of the First World War, multi-tier classification systems were used to communicate information to and from various fronts, which encouraged greater use of code making and breaking sections in diplomatic and military headquarters. Encoding became more sophisticated between the wars as machines were employed to scramble and unscramble information. The establishment of computer security inaugurated the history of information security. The need for such appeared during World War II. The volume of information shared by the Allied countries during the Second World War necessitated formal alignment of classification systems and procedural controls. An arcane range of markings evol