What is AWS Shield?

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. Here's how it works:

1. Understand the Service: AWS Shield provides automatic DDoS protection for applications hosted on AWS, which can minimize downtime and latency resulting from DDoS attacks.

2. Enable AWS Shield: AWS Shield Standard is automatically enabled for all AWS customers at no additional cost. It protects against most common and most frequently observed DDoS attacks.

3. Upgrade to AWS Shield Advanced: For higher level of protection, you can subscribe to AWS Shield Advanced. This provides additional DDoS mitigation capabilities, cost protection, and 24/7 DDoS response team (DRT) access.

4. Set Up Protection: With AWS Shield Advanced, you can protect your applications deployed on Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator, and Route 53.

5. Monitor and Respond to Attacks: AWS Shield Advanced also integrates with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall), giving you control over which traffic to allow or block to your applications, and allowing you to create custom rules to mitigate sophisticated attacks.

In summary, AWS Shield is a service that protects your applications from DDoS attacks, ensuring their availability and performance.