CDS

Cloudflare

CDS provides Cloudflare consulting, implementation, and managed services to protect websites and applications, improve website and application performance, protect and accelerate networks and manage cloud deployments. Cloudflare can provide secure ‘work from anywhere’ solutions. CDS can provide training for your team, or fully manage the environment on your behalf.

Features

  • Content delivery network (CDN)
  • Distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation
  • Web Application Firewall (WAF)
  • Load balancing
  • Bot mitigation
  • Zero trust identity and access management
  • DNS
  • Edge compute
  • SSL/TLS provisioning

Benefits

  • Deliver web content and applications to users faster, improving experience
  • Unmetered DDoS mitigation at L3,4 and 7, ensuring maximum availability
  • Thwart L7 application attacks, including XSS and SQL Injection
  • Safeguard from service disruptions with local and global failover
  • Detect and mitigate credential stuffing, content scrapers and spam leads
  • Fast, powerful and secure global DNS service
  • Protect internal resources by authenticating and monitoring per-user access
  • Allow developers to deploy code at Cloudflare's edge
  • Automatic TLS certificate generation and deployment

Pricing

£500 to £1,500 a unit a day

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at bidteam@cds.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

4 2 4 8 3 1 4 8 2 5 1 6 4 0 3

Contact

CDS Matt Johnson
Telephone: 0113 399 4000
Email: bidteam@cds.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Private cloud
Service constraints
None
System requirements
Management portal access requires a modern browser

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
9am-5pm Monday to Friday as standard; up to 24x7x365 by arrangement. SLAs vary by contract
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
We provide second- and third-line support and maintenance for deployed services via our ISO 20000-certified Service Desk, which uses an ITIL methodology to maintain the integrity and availability of business-critical, high profile and complex systems. Our Service Desk provides: •Incident and service request management •Problem management •Change management •Release and deployment management •Service level management and service reporting •Configuration management •Service management plan •Service level agreement. Clients can interact with the Service Desk via email, telephone or via an online ticketing system. All CDS Service Managers and Service Desk staff are ITIL-certified. Support and maintenance contracts stipulate a minimum level of support provision per month, appropriate to the size and complexity of the service; this entitles clients to a certain number of hours of support, at standard day rate. Additional time is chargeable at the agreed contract day rate. The SLA is flexible and can be tailored to customers’ requirements; as support needs vary, provision can be reviewed every six months to ensure it continues to meet client requirements. Typical SLAs include Service Desk support Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm; we can provide out of hours (on-call) support, up to 24x7x365.
Support available to third parties
No

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
CDS Cloud and Infrastructure teams support clients with cloud onboarding from discovery services through to service definition, planning and migration services. All new customers are assigned a specialist onboarding team which includes a Project Manager, Cloudflare Certified Architect and Customer Success Manager that will provide proactive support and advice for the duration of onboarding and go-live. This team leverage any additional assistance from DevOps / DevSecOps and other specialists to ensure solutions are provisioned as designed and maximised for workloads and planned scalability. Your specialist onboarding team will also provide access to a range of user guides and training materials as required, or facilitate further specialist user training as agreed.
Onboarding scope and transition services are bespoke to every customer but can include: discovery, systems audit and knowledge transfer planning, agreeing and documenting migration, defining support needs, processes and future governance, development of a Service Delivery Plan, and configuration including user accounts and permissions, setting up support services and supporting service desk documentation, training and professional services to support go-live and post go-live periods.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
The Cloudflare User Interface includes data aggregation logs, which include audit logs (log of every action taken within the interface and change to an account setting), as well as HTTP request logs. Data can be extracted via API in aggregate, or individual requests. This is the limit of customer data held by Cloudflare.
End-of-contract process
Standard contract terms will include details of contract duration and aligned notice periods along with agreed communication process for contract termination including details of 3rd party service providers including specific Cloud partner / platform. Contract commercials include service provision up to the end date of the contract. Any requirement to extend contract term, support exit planning, migration or data transfer should be requested in advance of contract end date. These services, and any required post contract end date, would be provided at an additional cost aligned to SFIA rate card. At the end of the contract, all services included in the contract are deactivated, decommissioned and subscriptions cancelled.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
Users can access the Cloudflare dashboard using mobile devices as the solution is browser based, and responsive.
There is also a native app for iOS and Android.
Service interface
Yes
User support accessibility
None or don’t know
Description of service interface
The core service administration interface for Cloudflare is browser based.
Accessibility standards
None or don’t know
Description of accessibility
N/A
Accessibility testing
N/A
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
Cloudflare's API exposes the entire Cloudflare infrastructure via a standardized programmatic interface. You can manage your account settings, configure products, and develop applications using the Cloudflare API.
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
HTML
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
The level of customisation of the service as a whole is dependent on the individual services procured. Web application firewall, load-balancing, bot mitigation, and zero-trust access services for example are highly customisable to meet your requirements.

Scaling

Independence of resources
Cloudflare's Anycast architecture and software-based security implementation to ensure high reliability and scalability across our 270+ data centers, facilitating up to a 142 TB/sec throughput.
All of our services run on all of our servers, in every data center, paired with a 100% Anycast architecture. Anycast network routing is able to route incoming connection requests across multiple data centers.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Audit logs summarize the history of changes made within your Cloudflare account. Audit logs include account level actions like login and logout, as well as setting changes to DNS, Crypto, Firewall, Speed, Caching, Page Rules, Network, and Traffic features, etc. Audit Logs are available on all plan types and are captured for both individual users and for multi-user organizations.
The Cloudflare dashboard provides a range of metrics dependent on exact services consumed e.g. HTTP requests, request blocked by firewall rules, load-balancing status, etc.
Reporting types
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra support
Organisation whose services are being resold
Cloudflare

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • Other locations
User control over data storage and processing locations
Yes
Datacentre security standards
Managed by a third party
Penetration testing frequency
Less than once a year
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
Equipment disposal approach
A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Via reports or SIEM integrations
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
Pdf
Data import formats
Other
Other data import formats
N/A there is no requirement to upload any data

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
100% uptime guarantee
Approach to resilience
Cloudflare's network is based on Anycast routing, any one of thousands of servers in 270+ locations around the world is able to provide all of our service functionality on a given IP address. The network is the most interconnected network in the world - present in more Internet Exchanges globally than any other. The network is designed to cope with many nodes on the network map becoming unavailable and still providing service.
Datacenters are regularly taken offline for among other reasons maintenance without any service degradation. Should a certain location become unavailable due to high load from an attack, we will proactively re-route our prioritised Enterprise service level customers to ensure the minimal impact is seen for your application users in that region. 
Within each datacenter, no single server/node is responsible for any service. These are also distributed across all metals such that server failures, hardware or networking issues won't impact the service/performance of our customers.
Outage reporting
Public dashboard, email alerts

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Cloudflare provisions access based on the principles of least privilege and need to know. Additional access must be requested via our internal ticketing system and it requires both a legitimate business reason and manager approval. Logging and Monitoring Policy
Access restriction testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
You control when users can access audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
You control when users can access audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
NQA
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
13/7/2021
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
N/A
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Cyber essentials
No
Cyber essentials plus
Yes
Other security certifications
No

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security policies and processes
CDS is certificated to BS EN ISO27001 – Information Security Management System and registered under the Data Protection Act 1998. (DPA No. Z5255664), and is Cyber Essentials Plus certified. CDS ensures client information is securely maintained through our audited processes and procedures. These are detailed in our SYSOPS which form part of our ISO27001 accreditation which is independently audited twice yearly. Our SYSOPS cover personnel and IT security requirements. All staff are BPSS cleared at minimum. CDS endeavours to ensure that personal data is kept secure against unauthorised or unlawful loss or disclosure. CDS employs a dedicated Security manager (ITSM).

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Configuration and change management approach
CDS operate a mature Change Management process, which is certified to the ISO 20000 standard. We ensure that all configuration or service changes are put through a controlled Change Management process, to ensure that impact and risk are managed, quality is maintained, and that changes are planned, documented and approved. Impact and risk assessment includes security considerations. Our Change Register is underpinned by a Configuration Management toolset and process, which charts the lifecycle of configuration items, and allows for them to be linked to service transactions, such as incidents and changes.
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
CDS undertake periodic independent pen and vulnerability scanning of our networks and network services. This forms part of our ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation. CDS also undertake vulnerability scanning of client solutions during development and at the point of release. Any identified vulnerabilities are assessed based upon the threat type and business risk. Those issues requiring attention form part of a remediation plan. The individual items are logged and assigned a priority based upon severity and tracked through our ITIL service desk.
Protective monitoring type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Protective monitoring approach
Our perimeter networks are protected with DDoS mitigation layer which is further reinforced with threat detection and response as part of every ingress/egress point. IDS and IPS are in place on all firewalls and all suspicious activity is logged and alerted to a central location. Additionally all firewalls and networks are registered with the NCSC Early Warning service. Infrastructure device logs are reported to a centralised SIEM solution with profiling in place to detect malicious activities such as repeated, failed administrator login attempts as well as more sophisticated events indicating exfiltration attempts.
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
CDS operate a mature Incident and Service Request Management process, certified to the ISO 20000 standard. The process is operated by our Service Management tool, which is interactive and can be configured to support the ticket workflow and metrics agreed with customers. Customers can report and update incidents via our interactive portal, email and telephone. Though we operate a core Incident Management policy and process, these can be tailored within customers Service Level Agreements to support common incidents and events. We operate a separate Major Incident Management process, which can provide incident reports, post-mortems etc., when criteria are triggered.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Fighting climate change

Fighting climate change

CDS is certified to the internationally recognised standard BS EN ISO 14001: 2004 – Environmental Management. The standard underpins our commitment to look after the environment, prevent negative environmental impacts, manage waste and reduce our carbon footprint.  CDS is Planet Mark accredited, helping us to transform society, the environment and economy by measuring our carbon and social data. Our Carbon Reduction Plan sets corporate continual improvement goals, strategies and annual targets and CDS has pledged to halve our carbon emissions by 2030 and be carbon-neutral by 2050. The Bailie Group (of which CDS is part), is applying for ISO 50001 Energy Management System certification in 2022, which will focus our efforts on continually improving energy performance. Example initiatives and activities designed to fight climate change include: • Mandatory environmental awareness training for all new staff. Thereafter, all staff are required to complete annual refresher training • Introducing site-wide recycling facilities and waste streaming • Regular staff awareness bulletins on the company’s intranet on environment and sustainability best practices, to encourage behavioural change among staff • Replacing bottled water and disposable cups with personal water bottles and reusable insulated coffee cups, to replace single use plastics • Refurbishing our Leeds office to make it more environmentally friendly including changing the entire building to LED lighting with PIR sensors on the lights and replacing gas boilers with air source heating • Providing season ticket loans for public transport to reduce single car use • Investing in collaboration tools and video conferencing to eliminate unnecessary travel • Adding additional questions into our procurement compliance checklist, to encourage all of our potential suppliers to adopt sustainable practices.
Covid-19 recovery

Covid-19 recovery

Through our work with local authorities, transport and national infrastructure clients, we have supported many communications campaigns designed to support recovery from the impacts of Covid-19 in local communities. This includes: • Transport for London: working as TfL’s print and communications partner, CDS has supported the campaign to encourage people safely back onto public transport, producing outdoor media, train/bus stickers, signage and leaflets • London Borough of Lambeth: as Lambeth’s print partner, we have supported the borough council with its response to Covid-19, and delivering communications campaigns reaching citizens and businesses. Most recently, this has focussed on supporting recovery and economic regeneration • CDS supported Make it York (an organisation supporting York-based businesses to achieve economic prosperity) to deliver a campaign encouraging shoppers safely back into the city. Other initiaitives and activities include: • Offering opportunities for work experience, such as unpaid student placements • Providing apprenticeships • Improving workplace conditions including effective social distancing, increased cleaning and flexible, hybrid working • Creating employment opportunities for people made unemployed by Covid-19
Tackling economic inequality

Tackling economic inequality

CDS provides a range of initiatives designed to create new businesses, new jobs and new skills within our local community. These include: • Apprenticeships and work experience, particularly for people who face barriers to employment. In the past two years, we have provided nine apprenticeship positions at our Leeds head office, of which four have become full-time employees. This year, we plan to offer around 20 new apprenticeship roles across the company. • Local employment: as a national company, CDS operates from six offices, each run as an autonomous business unit, managed by local teams. This regional structure has resulted in CDS becoming a community-focussed organisation, owing to local recruitment. • Engagement with local SMEs to encourage spend in the community. • Volunteering: many CDS staff give up their free time to volunteer as part of our charity initiatives.
Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

CDS’ fully hybrid working model enables participation by people from across the country, including people experiencing limited mobility, neurodivergence and/or clinical vulnerability. Our Leeds head office is also highly accessible, with ground-floor access, a disabled toilet, a lift to the first and second floors and step-free access to all meeting spaces and refreshment areas.   CDS operates an inclusive and accessible recruitment practice; we actively encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Our recruitment process is fair, equal, and non-discriminatory and works on the premise that the best person for the role will be offered the job.   As part of our people strategy, we will be using the Disability Confident standard to inform how we can provide opportunities for disabled people to join the organisation in the future.   Other initiatives and activities include: - STEM Programme: designed to break down barriers that might prevent young people from pursuing a career in technology - Structured staff appraisal process to identify individual skill gaps, and a training programme and assigned budget for delivering Personal Development Plans.
Wellbeing

Wellbeing

We support the health and wellbeing of our staff through a range of initiatives including: - Employee Assistance Programme -Trained Mental Health First Aiders - Flexible working hours to balance work and home activities - Personal healthcare plan - Staff social committee who organise regular events e.g., quizzes, film nights, meals out - Charity work in support of our chosen charity partner - Organised sponsored physical activities including the Yorkshire Three Peaks and ‘Tour de CDS’ - Cycle to Work Scheme, bike storage and shower facilities to encourage exercise - Free yoga classes and back massages - Quarterly staff engagement survey - Monthly ‘360’ reviews and professional development plans for all staff - Inclusive and accessible recruitment practices - Employee intranet providing regular content on wellbeing topics, including mental health and promoting awareness days such as Time to Talk.

Pricing

Price
£500 to £1,500 a unit a day
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
No

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at bidteam@cds.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.