Cloudflare is a top-notch web application firewall, offering a range of services at very reasonable prices. Even on their free plan, you get DNS hosting along with proxy services. This means your server details, known as origin servers, are shielded from potential attackers scanning for open ports. Plus, you get basic firewall features, SSL protection, DDoS protection and basic bot protection.
But that’s not all – Cloudflare is also a content delivery network (CDN) provider. This means frequently accessed files can be cached, reducing the load on your servers and speeding up your site for users. It’s a win-win for security and performance.
Showing above looking up the IP address for fluiditsolutions.co.uk shows as 104.21.59.102 & 172.67.174.197, both cloudflare’s IPs. The actual IP address of the host for the website is 185.x.x.x (blanked out for security).
There are also options out of the box to hide response headers that could give away information about your origin servers technology and add important security headers. All for free still.
Simple toggle to enable options.
With the paid version of Cloudflare, you gain access to additional features, including managed firewall rule sets. These rule sets, created and updated by Cloudflare, offer enhanced security options. For instance, they include sets based on the OWASP Mod Core rule set, allowing you to adjust anomaly and paranoia levels to tailor the security level to your needs.
Additionally, Cloudflare provides a managed ruleset specifically designed to safeguard common off-the-shelf products like WordPress, Drupal, and Magento against known exploits. This ensures that your platforms remain protected from common vulnerabilities.
Moreover, Cloudflare offers a leaked credentials ruleset, which checks users’ login details against a database of leaked credentials. If a user’s details appear in the database, depending on the severity of the leak, they can be blocked or your software prompted to take action through a header. This added layer of security helps prevent unauthorized access to your systems.
Cloudflare sits in front of your servers, so works with any technology, AWS, Azure or even cheap shared hosting to offer that extra piece of mind.
There are a mass of other options to protect and optimise your systems, too many to cover in this article.
If you’re thinking of protecting your systems with Cloudflare, why not get in touch to discuss your needs and setup
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