Cloudflare is a prominent American company that provides a variety of services designed to enhance the security, performance, and reliability of internet properties. Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better internet. They aim to provide essential internet services that are accessible to all types of organizations, from small personal blogs to large enterprise businesses. Their focus on security, performance, and reliability reflects their commitment to creating a safer, faster, and more resilient internet for everyone.
Core Cloudflare Services
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): Cloudflare’s CDN improves the speed and performance of websites by distributing content across a large network of servers around the world. This ensures that users receive data from the nearest server, reducing latency and load times.
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection: Cloudflare protects websites from DDoS attacks, which can overwhelm servers with traffic and cause downtime. Their network is designed to absorb and mitigate these attacks, keeping sites online and functional.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF): The WAF provides an additional layer of security by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the internet. It helps to protect against common web threats and vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
- DNS Services: Cloudflare offers DNS services that are faster and more secure than traditional DNS providers. They use Anycast routing to ensure quick resolution times and DDoS protection for DNS queries.
- SSL/TLS Encryption: Cloudflare provides free and paid SSL/TLS certificates to encrypt data between users and servers. This ensures that data is transmitted securely, protecting sensitive information from interception and tampering.
- Zero Trust Security: Cloudflare One is a comprehensive, cloud-based network-as-a-service solution that includes Zero Trust security principles. It aims to secure access to applications, devices, and networks without relying on traditional VPNs.