AWS Shield and Shield Advanced Features

Amazon Web Services offers DDoS protection through AWS Shield, integrated with their cloud platform. Shield Standard provides automatic protection for all AWS customers at no additional charge. This baseline protection defends against common DDoS attacks targeting AWS resources. Shield Advanced adds enhanced protection, real-time monitoring, and cost protection.

Shield Standard automatically protects Elastic Load Balancers, CloudFront distributions, and Route 53 hosted zones. The service detects and mitigates SYN floods, UDP floods, and other common attacks. Protection activates automatically without customer configuration. While effective against basic attacks, Shield Standard lacks advanced features needed for sophisticated threats.

Shield Advanced significantly enhances protection capabilities. Subscribers receive dedicated DDoS Response Team support during attacks. Advanced attack diagnostics provide detailed visibility into attack patterns and mitigation effectiveness. Cost protection ensures customers don't pay for attack-related resource scaling. Integration with AWS WAF enables application-layer protection with custom rules.

Pricing for Shield Advanced starts at $3,000 monthly plus data transfer fees. This substantial commitment targets larger organizations with critical AWS workloads. The service includes protection for Elastic IPs, Elastic Load Balancers, CloudFront, Global Accelerator, and Route 53. While expensive, Shield Advanced provides comprehensive protection for AWS-centric architectures.