cloudflare services

• essentially acts as an reverse proxy, but with much more features
• known for (1) securing websites, (2) optimizing performance and (3) protection from malicious attacks; also offers (1) identity and (2) access management services

key features

• reverse proxy - intercept requests before they reach the server, filtering out malicious traffic
• DDoS protection - detect & block unusual traffic patterns
  • also, has thousands of servers and can absorb massive amounts of traffic
    • mitigate layer 3 and 4 attacks (SYN / UDP floods)
  • provides challenge mechanisms (CAPTCHA, JS challenges)
• web application firewall (WAF) - an additional layer of protection against threats like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), amongst others
• identity & access management - provides SSO & MFA integration

security auth