Introduction
Cybersecurity has become a significant concern for cloud service providers because they host a vast amount of sensitive data from various clients. The onus is on cloud service providers to ensure safety and security of the data of their clients. As a result, the most renowned cloud service providers offer various security products to ensure data safety. Of these, the most critical tools for addressing DDoS and other malicious attacks are AWS Shield, Azure DDoS, and Google Cloud Armor.
In this blog post, we will provide a factual comparison of these three popular cloud security tools regarding their features, performance, pricing, and support. By the end of this article, you will have a clear understanding of which cloud security tool best fits your needs.
Feature Comparison
AWS Shield, Azure DDoS, and Google Cloud Armor are signature cloud-based security services that protect web services from DDoS and many other types of security threats. Each tool offers different functionalities. Therefore, it is essential to understand the features of each tool and compare them based on their ease of use and the level of security they offer.
AWS Shield
AWS Shield provides two types of services, Standard and Advanced. AWS Shield Standard offers protection against common, most basic DDoS attacks to Amazon CloudFront, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and Amazon Route 53 resources. AWS Shield standard is included at no additional cost with Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, Global Accelerator, and Elastic Load Balancing. However, it has limited services compared to AWS Shield Advanced, making it an entry-level protection service.
AWS Shield Advanced, on the other hand, caters to more threatening DDoS attacks, including application-layer attacks, infrastructure attacks, and protocol attacks. AWS Shield advanced provides intelligent detections and mitigations of DDoS attacks. You can also integrate AWS Shield Advanced with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) to have an additional layer of protection.
Azure DDoS
Azure DDoS protection services offer several features that help protect resources from volumetric and protocol-based DDoS attacks. The tool comes with two tiers of protection services depending on the size and complexity of the DDoS attack capacity needed for the application. They are the basic tier and the standard tier.
Azure DDoS Basic protects the platform from various common network-layer attacks. It is limited to the virtual network resources, and there is no service-level agreement (SLA) paired with Azure DDoS Basic. Azure DDoS Standard, on the other hand, is a more advanced DDoS protection feature that safeguards applications and resources from all DDoS attack types, including infrastructure, protocol, and application-level attacks.
Google Cloud Armor
Google Cloud Armor prime capabilities are built on the Google Cloud and serve as a traditionally uncomplicated but powerful security tool for cloud storage. It provides web application firewall protection (WAF) and advanced filtering capabilities to help mitigate the impact of a DDoS attack.
Google Cloud Armor contains two forms of security rules- Google Managed Rules, (including SQL injection and cross-site scripting XSS attacks), and security policies which allow custom rules. It also offers IP blacklisting and whitelisting to block IP addresses, which provides specific access control for organizations.
Comparison of pricing and support
The pricing, support, and level of service that come with these tools plays a major role in deciding which cloud security tool is best for your organization.
AWS Shield
AWS Shield Standard comes with no additional cost for AWS resources. AWS Shield Advanced is optional and incurs an additional monthly fee. The pricing depends on the type of service you need and the volume of AWS resources you want to protect. You can purchase AWS Shield from the AWS Management Console by subscribing to AWS Shield Standard or AWS Shield Advanced.
AWS provides different levels of support—Basic, Developer, Business, and Enterprise—based on your AWS plans.
Azure DDoS
Azure DDoS Basic is a free service that comes bundled with Azure Core networking services such as Azure Virtual Network, Azure Load Balancer, Application Gateway, and VPN Gateway. Azure DDoS standard has increased pricing and is offered as an add-on service to the Azure Core services mentioned above.
Microsoft provides a range of support levels - Basic, Developer, Standard, and Professional Direct - with varying degrees of flexibility, depending on the customer's need.
Google Cloud Armor
Google Cloud Armor's pricing ranges based on the services and amount of data consumed. Its basic version starts at $0.75 per hour and includes 30 GBs of network egress data.
Google provides various support options - bronze, silver, gold, and platinum - based on customer requirements.
Conclusion
AWS Shield, Azure DDoS, and Google Cloud Armor are significant cloud security tools used extensively across the industry. They provide necessary DDoS protection and mitigate attacks while ensuring the utmost data security. However, deciding which tool to use for your cloud security needs may prove challenging. Despite this, after carefully examining the features, pricing, and support levels, you can make a well-informed decision concerning which tool best suits your organization's needs.