Cloudflare is a company that provides protection against cyberattacks. On Friday, a failure occurred in their service, temporarily making many websites and platforms inaccessible.
In Estonia, government agency websites were also unavailable. For example, the websites of the government, parliament, and police were inaccessible. The ERR news portal and other ERR websites were also temporarily non-functional.
The Cloudflare outage began before 11 AM. Access to websites was restored around 11:15 AM. Many private companies use Cloudflare services, such as Bolt and some media companies.
Deputy Director General of RIA Gert Auväärt said the outage was global. The US company Cloudflare's service was down for 21 minutes, affecting many websites worldwide.
Cloudflare provides protection for websites against attacks. RIA mediates their services to Estonian government agencies. This is already the second widespread failure in a few weeks.
RIA does not know if the cause of Friday's failure was a cyberattack. However, in November, there was another failure caused by an attack. Auväärt said Cloudflare is a globally very important service provider.
Cloudflare made a quick fix 21 minutes after the failure appeared. Access to websites was restored. Auväärt said there is currently no better alternative to Cloudflare.
Cloudflare services are very widely used. In almost 99% of cases, the service works well, and websites open securely. Auväärt said alternatives are being sought, but the issue is about the balance of price and quality.