Amazon offers several cloud services for its users. These services offer security benefits also. Amazon offers various services and policies to ensure security in user-orchestrated solutions. There are a number of security services of which one is AWS Shield. This article will explain what AWS Shield is, how it works, and the benefits that this service has to offer.

What is AWS Shield?

AWS Shield by Amazon Serves the purpose of tackling “DDOS” (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. It protects the network layer, the transport layer, and the application layer. AWS Shield standard only protects the network and transport layer while the advanced service protects the application layer also:

Understanding DDOS attacks is necessary before heading to how AWS Shield works. Let us understand these attacks

Distributed Denial of Service

This is a cyber-attack on an application or a website that overloads the server with multiple user requests to crash the server. As the server crashes, it allows the attacker to carry out other attacks to steal data and information. This is a brief explanation of DDOS attacks.

Let us head to how AWS Shield works:

How Does AWS Shield Work?

AWS Shield is a fully managed service that offers standard and advanced (subscription) techniques for application protection. It works in three phases. These are:

• Monitoring
• Detection
• Mitigation

Let us understand these phases:

Monitoring

AWS Shield continuously monitors the traffic coming to your application. Traffic can be set in parameters so that resource overload does not happen. This way traffic is continuously monitored at each security layer.

Detection

AWS Shield uses different Machine Learning algorithms and techniques to separate malicious requests from legitimate requests. This process is called traffic scrubbing. Along with scrubbing, this service is continuously providing insights for users.

Mitigation

After the malicious traffic is detected and scrubbed, AWS Shield uses different mitigation techniques to tackle DDOS attacks while ensuring the resources remain available for the end user. It simply blocks malicious traffic.

This is how AWS Shield works. Let us head to some of the benefits that it has to offer.

What are the Benefits of AWS Shield?

AWS Shield offers several benefits depending on the user’s requirements. Some of these benefits are:

• Continuous Protection
• Quick Response
• Scalability
• Advance Protection
• Easy Management
• Budget Friendly

Let us explain these benefits briefly.

Continuous Protection

This service provides continuous monitoring of potential DDOS attacks and handles these attacks on its own without any hassle. It is a 24/7 security service.

Quick Response

This service not only monitors and tackles threats but does it very quickly. It uses various mitigation techniques to handle these threats.

Scalability

All AWS data centers are protected by AWS Shield. Threats originating from various locations are tackled by this service.

Advance Protection

This service offers extra security protocols depending on user needs. AWS Shield Advanced offers application security along with network and transport layer security.

Easy Management

It is a fully managed cloud service by Amazon that offers a user-friendly interface to review security protocols and policies.

Budget Friendly

AWS Shield Standard is a free service to use but the advanced service is paid. Moreover, the cost of the advanced version depends upon the threats and is still highly budget-friendly.

Conclusion

AWS Shield is a cloud security service by Amazon that protects against common and frequent DDOS attacks. This service continuously monitors incoming traffic and blocks malicious traffic. Amazon fully manages this service. This article has explained how AWS Shield works.