AWS Shield Expands DDoS Monitoring

Amazon Web Services (AWS), is offering Shield users more visibility into distributed denial of service (DDoS), attacks across its platform.
The company announced this week that it has added a “global threats environment dashboard” to its Advanced Shield security service. Shield, which was launched at reInvent late last year, is designed to protect users of AWS’ Route 53 and Elastic Load Balancing services against application-level DDoS attacks.
There are two types of Shield service. All AWS customers can use the Standard edition for free, without any minimum term requirements. The Advanced edition is more feature-rich and requires a minimum of a one year subscription. It starts at $3,000 per monthly. It includes all of the features of the Standard edition as well as protections against more sophisticated DDoS attacks, integration with AWS Web application firewall (WAF), and integration with AWS Web application firewall.
The Advanced edition previously alerted users about DDoS attacks via CloudWatch metrics or the AWS Management console. The enhanced dashboard provides AWS customers with a more real-time overview of all security anomalies AWS is monitoring in its cloud.
It includes information about attack frequencies, top attack vectors, and the attack scale. You can also view historical attack data for a set time period.
According to AWS the goal is to provide users with advance warning of potential security vulnerabilities so they can adjust their security protections accordingly.
Ritwik Manan (AWS senior product manager), wrote Wednesday that this information could help you understand the DDoS target profiles of the AWS services that you use. It can also help you create a more resilient, distributed architecture for your application.
You can find more information about the AWS Shield service here.