Amazon Web Services unveils ‘Shield’
Amazon announced a new tool called Shield. It is a product that is meant to protect online properties from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks like the ones that took down online giants like Reddit, Netflix, and Twitter in 2016. This launch puts Amazon in direct competition with other internet companies like Cloudflare which provide similar services.
There are two options, one called AWS Shield Standard with basic integrated DDoS protection, which will be turned on by default for AWS customers. This is a huge selling point for any potential customers looking to move infrastructure to the cloud and considering all the possible options. There is also a premium version called AWS Shield Advanced for more sophisticated and targeted online attacks.
“I think this will really help you protect yourselves even against the largest and most sophisticated attacks that we’ve seen out there,” said Werner Vogels, the Amazon chief technology officer, announcing Shield at the event today.
There is no comparable service on Microsoft Azure at this point. Considering how pervasive these DDoS attacks have become, it is likely to be a standard part of all cloud computing services going forward.
After the recent attack on online DNS provider Dyn, which was responsible for hosting the DNS infrastructure, Amazon has discontinued its reliance on the DNS provider. Amazon is now following the Dyn recommendation and using multiple root DNS servers for redundancy.
