Google's Project Shield protects news and human rights sites from DDoS attacks

The web facilitates free speech, but it also gives groups the opportunity to try to silence those they disagree with. DDoS attacks are common way to retaliate against opposing views, and today Google is expanding Project Shield to protect sites from such attacks.

Project Shield is not a new service, but it has been limited to a group of testers since its launch a few years back. Designed to detect and eliminate "DDoS as a form of censorship" the free service is now available to everyone -- those who qualify, at least. The aim is to protect news and human rights sites to ensure uninterrupted access to news and information.

It's not a service that is being made available to everyone. Google explains that "Project Shield welcomes applications from websites serving news. Human rights and or elections monitoring content are also welcome to apply. We do not provide service to other types of content, including gaming, businesses, or individual blogs". The company highlights ease of use, pointing out that the necessary DNS record changes can be made by a webmaster in a matter of minutes.

The expansion will bring Project Shield to tens of thousands of human rights and news sites, helping to protect journalism and promote free speech:

A simple, inexpensive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack can be carried out by almost anyone with access to a computer -- and take a site completely offline before its owners even know they've been attacked.

These attacks threaten free expression and access to information -- two of Google's core values. So a few years ago we created Project Shield, an effort that uses Google’s security infrastructure to detect and filter attacks on news and human rights websites. Now we're expanding Project Shield beyond our trusted testers, and opening it up to all the world’s news sites to protect them from DDoS attacks and eliminate DDoS as a form of censorship.

Check out Google's introductory video to find out more about Project Shield:

If you want to protect your site, you can sign up at the Project Shield website.