Cloudflare, Inc (NYSE: NET), a connectivity cloud company, has published its fourth annual Year in Review. From what it’s understood, the data has explored global Internet insights and security trends, accompanied by information on popular Internet services in 2023.
According to an official release, Cloudflare’s Year in Review revealed that in 2023 alone, there was a 25% increase in global traffic, with no signs of slowing. It’s believed that this growth underscores the dependency on Internet services to facilitate and underpin systems and tasks such as supporting global digital economies, enabling the operations of healthcare networks, maintaining business continuity for enterprises, and connecting people with their communities.
2023 highlights unveiled by the data showed that for the most popular Internet service category, Google came in first for the second year in a row, followed by Facebook, Apple, and TikTok. With regards to the most popular social media platform in 2023, Facebook came in first, beating out 2022 leader TikTok, followed up by Instagram and Twitter/X. For the most popular Generative AI service category in 2023, OpenAI came in first, followed by Character AI, Quillbot, and Hugging Face. Reportedly in 2023, threat actors most commonly launched attacks on financial organisations, globally, with deceptive links and extortion attempts found in malicious email messages being the top two most leveraged attack types. Moreover, there were over 180 Internet outages around the world in 2023, compared to over 150 in 2022, with many due to government-directed regional and national shutdowns of Internet connectivity.
“I believe our role on the Internet allows us to see the ebbs and flows of online popularity and emerging technology trends in real-time – such as the boom in AI and accelerated global use of Starlink. It is our responsibility to be transparent and share the data and perspectives from reports such as our Year in Review to help keep the online world more informed, resilient, and secure,” Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare, said.
