Project Cybersafe Schools and CIPA
Project Cybersafe Schools (PCS) grants eligible schools free access to Cloudflare’s Email Security and Gateway products.
Like other under-resourced organizations, schools face cyber attacks from malicious actors that can impact schools’ ability to safely perform a basic function – teach children. Schools face email, phishing, and ransomware attacks that slow access and threaten leaks of confidential student data.
PCS will help support small K-12 public school districts, for free, by providing cloud email security to protect against a broad spectrum of threats including malware-less business email compromise, multichannel phishing, credential harvesting, and other targeted attacks. PCS will also protect against Internet threats with DNS filtering by preventing users from reaching unwanted or harmful online content like ransomware or phishing sites and can be deployed to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).
This program is only available to eligible school districts. To be eligible, Project Cybersafe School participants must be:
- K-12 public school districts located in the United States.
- Up to 2,500 students in the district.
Apply to Project Cybersafe Schools ↗.
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) ↗ is a federal law enacted by the United States Congress to address concerns about children's access to inappropriate or harmful content over the Internet. CIPA requires K-12 schools and libraries that receive certain federal funding to implement Internet safety measures to protect minors from harmful online content.
The law aims to prevent students from accessing explicit, obscene, or otherwise harmful material. It also emphasizes the use of technology protection measures, including DNS filtering, to safeguard against Internet threats such as ransomware, phishing sites, and other potentially harmful content.
CIPA mandates that K-12 schools and libraries adopt Internet safety policies that include measures to block or filter access to specific categories of content. These categories encompass a wide range of topics that could be harmful or inappropriate for minors. Compliance with these requirements helps ensure that students' online experiences are safer and more secure.
To facilitate compliance with CIPA requirements, administrators can enable a single filtering policy option. This includes applying the required filter categories to block access to unwanted or harmful online content.
Cloudflare’s recommended CIPA rule blocks the following content subcategories:
- Adult Themes
- Alcohol
- Anonymizer
- Brand Embedding
- Child Abuse
- Command and Control & Botnet
- Cryptomining
- DGA Domains
- DNS Tunneling
- Drugs
- Gambling
- Hacking
- Malware
- Militancy, Hate & Extremism
- Nudity
- P2P
- Phishing
- Pornography
- Private IP Address
- Profanity
- Questionable Activities
- School Cheating
- Spam
- Spyware
- Tobacco
- Violence
- Weapons
Review the domain categories for more information.