Cloudflare has entered a strategic partnership with Mastercard to develop new tools aimed at strengthening cyber resilience for small businesses, critical infrastructure and governments.
The collaboration is designed to address growing “cyber blind spots” that emerge as organisations expand their digital footprints. As businesses integrate new vendors, outsourced services, shadow IT and legacy systems, their attack surface can become fragmented and poorly understood.
By combining Mastercard’s cyber intelligence capabilities with Cloudflare’s application security technology, the companies aim to help organisations innovate without compromising security.
Under the agreement, attack surface monitoring capabilities from Mastercard’s Recorded Future and RiskRecon will be integrated with Cloudflare’s Application Security portfolio. The unified solution is intended to enable organisations to identify, prioritise and remediate hidden risks across their internet-facing environments from a single dashboard.
Cloudflare provides a connectivity cloud platform that helps organisations secure and accelerate applications, APIs and websites. Its Application Security portfolio includes tools such as web application firewalls, encryption and automated defences designed to protect against modern cyber threats.
Mastercard, best known for its global payments network, has significantly expanded its cybersecurity and risk intelligence capabilities in recent years. Through Recorded Future and RiskRecon, it offers threat intelligence, third-party risk monitoring and security ratings designed to give organisations real-time visibility into their cyber posture.
The joint offering will focus on three primary objectives. First, it aims to eliminate blind spots by allowing users to monitor their digital presence and discover internet-facing domains or software stacks identified through Recorded Future. Where unprotected assets are found, organisations will be able to deploy Cloudflare’s security controls to protect those shadow assets.
Second, the partnership will provide real-time and continuously updated views of an organisation’s cyber posture. Businesses will receive an “A–F” graded security rating based on assessments of vulnerabilities, authentication weaknesses, exposed infrastructure and third-party risks. These insights will appear in Cloudflare’s Security Insights dashboard, prioritised by asset criticality and contextualised by severity.
Third, the solution will translate risk intelligence into actionable protection. Organisations will be able to activate security controls, including web application firewalls and automated defences, directly through the Cloudflare dashboard to mitigate identified threats.
Dan Cimpean, director of the Romanian National Cyber Security Directorate, said, “Improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity and reducing cyber risk is an ongoing, challenging mission. As society and global economies increasingly rely on digital networks, we must combine our efforts across the public and private sectors, across nations and international organizations, to build resilience and prevent cyber incidents. The protection of critical infrastructure is and must be a joint effort.”
Cloudflare chief strategy officer Stephanie Cohen said, “For small businesses, critical infrastructure, and governments, a cyberattack is more than a technical hurdle. It is an existential threat. Often considered ‘target rich but resource poor,’ these organizations are strategic targets and are often attacked at a greater rate than global enterprise or Fortune 500 organizations. This partnership brings together the best in cyber defense so that these underserved organizations don’t fall victim to the growing number of cyberattacks.”
Mastercard global head of Security Solutions Johan Gerber said, “With small businesses accounting for about half of the world’s GDP, closing the resilience gap is critical to securing the foundation of our global economy. Our collaboration with Cloudflare propels our mission to secure the digital ecosystem in partnership with governments and other key players, empowering businesses to focus on what matters most: their productivity and growth.”
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