AWS Shield is DDoS protection. It defends your applications against distributed denial-of-service attacks that try to overwhelm them with traffic.

Standard vs Advanced

Shield Standard is free and automatic for all AWS customers, covering common layer 3/4 attacks. Shield Advanced is paid and adds protection for larger, sophisticated attacks, 24/7 access to the DDoS response team, cost protection for scaling during an attack, and tighter integration with WAF. Scenario mentions guaranteed DDoS support and cost protection? Advanced.

Test yourself

Practice question

A high-profile app needs advanced DDoS protection with 24/7 access to AWS’s response team and billing protection during attacks. What do you use?

  1. Shield Standard
  2. Shield Advanced
  3. AWS WAF alone
  4. A larger EC2 instance
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation

Correct answer: B. Shield Advanced adds enhanced DDoS protection, the 24/7 DDoS Response Team, and cost protection during attacks. Shield Standard (A) is basic automatic coverage; WAF (C) handles web exploits, not volumetric DDoS; a bigger instance (D) doesn’t stop an attack.

Related topics

AWS WAF · Amazon CloudFront · Amazon Route 53

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