Cloudflare’s 2024 Review: Key Internet Trends and Security Insights

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the connectivity cloud company, has released its fifth annual Year in Review report, highlighting global internet trends, security developments, and the most popular online services in 2024. The comprehensive report offers a deep dive into the evolving digital landscape and Cloudflare’s critical role in the global internet ecosystem.

The internet has become the backbone of modern society, powering everything from emergency services and e-commerce to social media and smart home devices. Cloudflare’s 2024 report underscores the increasing reliance on the internet, with global traffic surging by 17% year-over-year (YoY) as more people and devices connect online.

Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare, stated, “We rely on the Internet almost constantly, yet many still see it merely as a collection of web pages. But the Internet is everywhere, woven throughout almost all of the daily activities of modern life – how we interact and connect on social media, use our smart refrigerators and vacuums, travel from one place to another through rideshare apps, connect to our banks, and more.”

The Year in Review provides valuable insights into the rapidly changing internet landscape, with notable highlights from 2024:

Key Findings:

• Most Popular Internet Services: Google ranked #1 for the third consecutive year, followed by Facebook (#2), Apple (#3), and TikTok (#4). WhatsApp entered the top ten for the first time.
• Most Popular Generative AI Services: OpenAI maintained its #1 position, with Codeium, Claude, and CoPilot joining the top ten for the first time, at #3, #5, and #7, respectively.
• Top Gaming Services: Gaming platforms saw significant growth, with Steam entering the top five for the first time and Minecraft joining the top ten. Roblox remained the most popular service for the fourth year in a row.
• Most Targeted Industry: The Gaming and Gambling industry overtook Finance as the most targeted sector for cyberattacks. Threats peaked in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl in the U.S.
• Internet Outages: Government-directed shutdowns accounted for over half of global internet outages, often in response to civil unrest or protests in countries like Mozambique, Iraq, and Pakistan.
• Malicious Traffic: About 6.5% of global internet traffic was identified as potentially malicious, showing a slight increase from 2023.
• Most Aggressive AI Bots: AI bots such as Bytespider (ByteDance) and ClaudeBot (Anthropic) were the most active in content consumption, though their traffic gradually declined over the year.

Cloudflare’s Year in Review is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to providing valuable insights through its Radar platform, a free tool that democratizes data access. Radar aggregates data from Cloudflare’s global network, spanning over 330 cities across 120+ countries, and from its 1.1.1.1 public DNS Resolver, enabling users to explore internet trends and patterns in real-time.

David Belson, Head of Data Insight at Cloudflare, said, “Our Year in Review is a part of Radar’s commitment to democratize Cloudflare’s data, offering a window into Internet trends and patterns for anyone to explore at their fingertips.”