AWS Shield Reviews

Name: AWS Shield
Brand: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Rating: 4.3 (6 reviews)

4.3 out of 5

6 reviews
100% willing to recommend

What is AWS Shield?

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

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AWS Shield is the #6 ranked solution in top Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions. PeerSpot users give AWS Shield an average rating of 8.6 out of 10. Based on the analysis of the 6 most recent AWS Shield reviews, the overall sentiment is positive, with a sentiment score of 7.6. (Among the highest in the category). AWS Shield is most commonly compared to Cloudflare: AWS Shield vs Cloudflare. AWS Shield is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 61% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 16% of all views.

Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

SteveNg

Head of Strategic Alliances at Quantum Security

Ultimately, the cost of the solution goes up as we add features, but I believe over time AWS has been adding more frequently asked features. Depending on the website, if our website has more transactions, more sensitive information, and more value, then, of course, we need more features. For us, we only require basic information, a website, some custom consumer, end user, and front-facing purposes. We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need. The pricing of the solution can be improved.

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Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

The product is quite good. It would be good if I could use AI for natural language processing. I could ask the AI about the historical data to see patterns. If I see a pattern, I could ask the AI to find similar patterns over the previous six months. It will be helpful to get such details on the console instead of checking the graph and logs to see the patterns manually. If we already use AWS, we do not have to look for an external tool to protect our infrastructure. I recommend the tool for startups. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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Prasad Mehta

Senior Security Specialist at Westpac Bank

The product is unsuitable for organizations that want to utilize WAF features and have critical applications to finetune security policies to allow or disallow various parameters and configurations. The product doesn’t provide a view of our applications' traffic or what is being blocked. There is no custom reporting or dashboard view. There are very minimal uses that we can get from the product. Other WAF tools give us a lot of insights into our traffic and options to finetune and configure firewall policies. The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements. Currently, the solution has high-level services like Load Balancer and CDN. The tool could extend the services to low-level services like servers and databases. Sometimes the customer does not want the standard or recommended path given by AWS, like CDN or ALB. Usually, the customers want to use their own Load Balancer and CDN solution. The tool notifies us about the final event, but there is no insight into the event. For example, if we have a DDoS alert, it only gives us five IPs or locations. It is enough for new users. However, if a customer wants more details, it is not available in the product.

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AWS Shield mindshare

As of December 2024, the mindshare of AWS Shield in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category stands at 5.9%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Comparison	AWS Shield vs Cloudflare	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Comparison	AWS Shield vs Arbor DDoS	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Comparison	AWS Shield vs Radware DefensePro	Dec 22, 2024	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Cloudflare	4.2	19.9%	95%	71 interviews Add to research
Cloudflare One	4.3	N/A	100%	19 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

AWS Shield's valuable features include seamless integration with AWS, ease of use, and maintenance-free operation. Users benefit from its transparency and minimal impact on performance. It offers effective DDoS protection, trend analysis, and event triggering, ensuring application security against web attacks. The tool's straightforward configuration and strong integration capabilities, especially with Active Directory, enhance its appeal. Users appreciate its efficient real-time attack mitigation and cost-effectiveness.

"The product is easy to use."
"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

Room for Improvement

AWS Shield has challenges in management and architecture modifications. Users find costs high with extra unwanted features. Some organizations consider it unsuitable due to limited customization in security policies and lack of detailed traffic insights. Reporting and dashboard capabilities need enhancement. The detection of anomalies is seen as slow, and users desire faster identification. The lack of flexibility in choosing bespoke components over AWS's recommendations and improved logging and reporting are desired areas of improvement.

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."
"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."
"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

ROI

Pricing

AWS Shield's pricing varies based on subscription level and AWS spend. Costs are influenced by monthly traffic volume, typically ranging from $200 to $300, perceived as competitive. Organizations report monthly expenses around $3000 and stress the importance of consolidated billing to avoid multiple charges across different accounts. While AWS Shield is considered cost-effective and beneficial compared to other solutions, its feature set may not fully match other CDN providers, yet it efficiently handles its core functions.

"The tool is cheap."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

Popular Use Cases

AWS Shield is primarily used for protecting against DDoS and Layer 7 attacks. Its capabilities include firewall protection for websites, safeguarding infrastructure and endpoints, and handling volume DDoS and lightweight web application frameworks. Online businesses, like casino companies, benefit significantly as they face constant, targeted threats. Organizations deploying workloads on EKS also rely on it to protect their server infrastructure from potential attacks. Users implement simple WAF rules including IP blocking and header management.

Service and Support

AWS Shield's customer support is highly reliable, offering timely assistance and comprehensive solutions. Users find the support team responsive, often going beyond initial issues to provide lasting resolutions. Having the right support level is crucial for prompt assistance. Many users maintain strong relationships with AWS technical account managers, benefiting from detailed sessions that align security deployments with their needs. Feedback indicates a positive experience, with AWS Shield support proving instrumental in addressing and mitigating problems effectively.

Deployment

The setup for AWS Shield is straightforward for those who integrate it from a project's start, but challenging for retrofitting. Organizations need a cloud engineer for daily tasks and a part-time architect to ensure alignment with Shield capabilities. Activating AWS Shield is simple, requiring minimal configuration and just a few minutes to enable. Although setup is easy, completing it might take a few days due to configuration approvals.

Scalability

AWS Shield demonstrates robust scalability, with users noting automated traffic monitoring and scaling. Ratings vary between eight and ten, reflecting high satisfaction. Organizations with different cloud presences report no concerns about scaling capabilities, even with numerous instances. Teams managing AWS Shield, often with few experienced security professionals, have effectively scaled usage across their members. AWS fully manages the scalability functionalities, enhancing the tool's reputation in diverse business environments.

Stability

Users report AWS Shield as highly stable, consistently rating its stability between eight and ten out of ten. Over four years, no issues have been noted, and the tool reliably provides alerts about events and security triggers. Stability is a key strength, with no concerns mentioned, indicating a dependable security solution.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our AWS Shield Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.