Glossary
AWS Shield
Network SecurityAWS Shield protects against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. It comes in two tiers:
Shield Standard (Free)
- Automatic protection for all AWS customers at no extra cost
- Protects against common Layer 3 (network) and Layer 4 (transport) DDoS attacks
- SYN floods, UDP reflection attacks, and other volumetric attacks
- Always-on detection and inline mitigation
Shield Advanced ($3,000/month)
- Enhanced L3/L4 protection plus Layer 7 (application) attack mitigation
- DDoS Response Team (DRT):24/7 access to AWS DDoS experts who can create WAF rules for you during an attack
- Cost Protection: credits for scaling charges (EC2, ELB, CloudFront, Route 53) caused by DDoS attacks
- Health-based Detection: integrates with Route 53 health checks for faster, more accurate detection
- Visibility: real-time metrics, detailed attack diagnostics, and post-attack reports
- Protects: CloudFront, Route 53, ELB, EC2, Global Accelerator
Related AWS Services
Related Terms
DDoS Attack
A Distributed Denial of Service attack that overwhelms a target with traffic from multiple sources, making it unavailable to legitimate users.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A firewall that filters HTTP/HTTPS traffic to web applications, blocking common attacks like SQL injection, XSS, and bot traffic using customizable rules.
AWS Network Firewall
A managed stateful network firewall and intrusion prevention system (IPS) for VPCs, supporting domain filtering, protocol inspection, and Suricata-compatible rules.
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