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AWS Shield Gets More Comprehensive DDoS Monitoring
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is giving users of its Shield product more visibility into distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks across its platform.
This week, the company announced the addition of a "global threat environment dashboard" to the Advanced version of its Shield security service. Launched late last year at re:Invent, Shield is designed to help protect users of AWS' Route 53, Elastic Load Balancing and CloudFront services against application-level DDoS attacks.
The Shield service comes in two flavors. The Standard edition is free for all AWS customers, with no minimum term requirement. The more feature-rich Advanced edition, however, requires at least a one-year subscription and starts at $3,000 per month. It includes all the features of the Standard edition, as well as protections for more sophisticated DDoS attacks and integration with the AWS Web application firewall (WAF).
Previously, the Advanced edition alerted users of DDoS attacks via CloudWatch metrics and the AWS Management Console. This week's addition of the enhanced dashboard gives AWS customers more of a real-time summary of all the security anomalies that AWS is tracking in its cloud.
It provides information on attack frequencies, top attack vectors and the scale of attacks, for example. Users can also view historical attack data within an adjustable timeframe.
According to AWS, the aim is to give users some advance warning about potential and existing security vulnerabilities, allowing them to adjust their applications' security protections accordingly.
"This information can help you understand the DDoS target profile of the AWSÂ services you use and, in turn, can help you create a more resilient and distributed architecture for your application," said Ritwik Manan, AWS senior product manager, in a blog post Wednesday.
More information on the AWS Shield service is available here.