Icon source: AWS
AWS Shield
Cloud Provider: AWS
What is AWS Shield
AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS against DDoS attacks.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a comprehensive portfolio of products and services designed to enhance the security, performance, and availability of websites and applications. Among these products, AWS Shield stands out as a pivotal security service aimed at safeguarding applications hosted on AWS against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks, which are increasingly common and sophisticated, aim to overwhelm web servers with an excessive load of internet traffic, causing services to slow down significantly or become entirely inaccessible to legitimate users.
AWS Shield is crafted to mitigate these threats, ensuring uninterrupted service availability. AWS Shield is intricately designed with two tiers of serviceâAWS Shield Standard and AWS Shield Advanced. Every AWS customer benefits from AWS Shield Standard at no additional cost, receiving automatic protection against the most common and frequently occurring DDoS attacks. This baseline level of defense is engineered to thwart attacks that are most typically encountered by web applications, ensuring that AWS-hosted websites can operate smoothly without the disruptions these attacks intend to cause.
For organizations with higher security needs or those that host critical infrastructure on AWS, AWS Shield Advanced offers a more robust level of protection. This premium tier includes enhanced DDoS mitigation capabilities, aimed at safeguarding against larger and more sophisticated attacks. AWS Shield Advanced provides additional benefits such as cost protection, which can shield an organization from scaling charges related to DDoS attack traffic, and access to a 24x7 DDoS Response Team (DRT). The DRT comprises expert security engineers who assist in designing and implementing advanced mitigation strategies tailored to the unique needs of an organizations' workload.
AWS Shield integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53, enhancing its effectiveness in defending applications. This integration allows AWS Shield to offer global protection, leveraging the extensive AWS network that spans across multiple geographical regions and edge locations.
The service is designed to automatically detect and mitigate DDoS attacks, ensuring minimal response time and reducing the risk of application downtime. It provides detailed attack diagnostics, allowing customers to understand the nature of the threats they face and how they are being mitigated. In summary, AWS Shield represents a critical component in the security architecture of any organization operating on the AWS cloud.
By offering comprehensive, automated protection against DDoS attacks, AWS Shield helps ensure that applications remain available and performant, even in the face of sustained internet-based threats. With its two-tiered approach, AWS Shield caters to a wide range of protection needs, from standard defense mechanisms for everyday applications to advanced mitigation techniques for critical infrastructure, making it a versatile and essential tool for maintaining uninterrupted online services.
Key AWS Shield Features
AWS Shield provides comprehensive DDoS protection, always-on detection and mitigation, cost protection, real-time visibility, seamless integration with AWS services, and global protection to ensure your applications are safeguarded against attacks.
AWS Shield provides comprehensive protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, safeguarding your applications running on AWS.
AWS Shield offers 24/7 detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, ensuring your services remain online and accessible.
AWS Shield protects against the financial impact of DDoS attacks by offering cost protection, which can help cover the costs incurred due to scaling of resources in response to a DDoS attack.
AWS Shield provides detailed reports and real-time visibility into attacks, enabling you to understand the types of threats your applications face and how they are being mitigated.
Seamless integration with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53, enhances the protection and performance of your applications.
AWS Shield offers global protection that defends against attacks of any size and type, ensuring your application is secure, regardless of its geographic location.
AWS Shield Use Cases
AWS Shield offers comprehensive DDoS protection with cost management, real-time visibility, seamless integration with AWS services, and leverages global threat intelligence to safeguard applications against known and emerging threats.
AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency. This is critical for businesses that operate online services, ensuring their applications remain available and performant, even during large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
AWS offers cost protection as a feature of AWS Shield Advanced, protecting customers from scaling charges resulting from DDoS-related traffic spikes. This financial safeguard ensures that businesses can predict their expenses better, even in the event of unexpected volumetric attacks.
AWS Shield provides detailed attack diagnostics and visibility through AWS WAF and AWS CloudWatch, allowing users to understand the nature of the attacks and respond promptly. This real-time data and reporting are crucial for businesses to assess their vulnerabilities and improve their defensive strategies.
AWS Shield offers seamless integration with other AWS services like Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53, enhancing the overall protection against DDoS attacks for applications and services hosted on AWS. This integration facilitates a more secure, efficient, and resilient infrastructure.
Leveraging the vast network of AWS, Shield Advanced uses global threat intelligence to proactively protect applications against known and emerging threats. This preemptive approach helps businesses stay one step ahead of potential attackers, ensuring a higher level of security.
Services AWS Shield integrates with
AWS Shield integrates with Amazon EC2 to provide enhanced DDoS protection to compute instances running on the EC2 platform.
AWS Shield integrates with Amazon CloudFront to protect applications and content delivery from DDoS attacks at the edge locations.
AWS Shield integrates with Elastic Load Balancing to defend applications behind load balancers from Layer 3 and 4 DDoS attacks.
AWS Shield integrates with AWS Global Accelerator to protect internet-facing applications running in multiple AWS Regions from DDoS attacks.
AWS Shield integrates with Amazon Route 53 to safeguard DNS services from DDoS attacks, ensuring the availability of domain name resolution.
AWS Shield integrates with AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to offer layer 7 (application layer) protection alongside DDoS defenses.
AWS Shield pricing models
AWS Shield offers a free Standard tier for basic DDoS protection and a paid Advanced tier with enhanced protection, DRT access, and financial safeguards against DDoS-related cost spikes.