Cloudflare has partnered with The Critical Infrastructure - Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (CI-ISAC Australia) to provide Australian GP clinics with zero trust security for free.

CI-ISAC Australia is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to help build the collective defences of Australia's critical infrastructure to protect them from cyberattacks.

As part of Cloudflare's new Project Secure Health initiative, clinics will be provided access to the vendor's secure web gateway solution Cloudflare Gateway, zero trust network access solution Cloudflare Access and CI-ISAC’s threat intelligence products and services.

The free services aim to provide protection for "under-resourced, yet high risk GP clinics," Cloudflare said.

“Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet, and part of that mission includes protecting vulnerable entities from the ever-increasing, malicious cyberattacks. GP clinics are the first points of call to care for our health, yet are often left unprotected with limited resources available to safeguard the significant amounts of patient data they hold.” said Steve Bray, head of ANZ at Cloudflare.

“With this program, Cloudflare is ensuring that zero trust capabilities are accessible to smaller organisations that are most relied upon by their communities.”

CI-ISAC facilitates sharing, aggregates sources and analyses cyber threat intelligence across multiple sectors, including healthcare.

Cloudflare said the partnership will enable Australia’s GP clinics to counter data breaches, ransomware attacks, phishing scams and insider threats.

“Australia’s GP clinics are the foundation of local communities' health. These small and vitally important organisations fulfil our society's primary healthcare needs, as such, are the point where a vast amount of sensitive patient information is collected," said David Sandell, CEO of CI-ISAC.

"However, despite their criticality, GP clinics are typically under-resourced and struggle to provide even basic cybersecurity resources, which is where CI-ISAC’s collective approach can empower GPs to improve their cyber resilience and protect patient data.”