In today's digital world, securing your internet-facing applications is paramount. Distributing Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, web application vulnerabilities, and malicious bots can significantly disrupt your services and damage your reputation. Google Cloud Armor offers a robust solution to fortify your application's defences. This blog post, aimed at developers, explores how Cloud Armor bolsters your application security on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

What is Cloud Armor?

Cloud Armor is a globally-distributed Web Application Firewall (WAF) and DDoS mitigation service offered by GCP. It acts as a security shield, positioned in front of your internet-facing applications, filtering malicious traffic before it reaches your backend servers. Cloud Armor offers a multi-layered defence against various threats, including:

DDoS Attacks: Cloud Armor safeguards your applications from volumetric (L3/L4) and Layer 7 DDoS attacks, ensuring service availability during traffic surges.
Web Application Attacks: Pre-configured WAF rules based on OWASP Top 10 risks help mitigate common web vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).

Benefits of Cloud Armor

Enhanced Security: Cloud Armor provides a comprehensive security solution, safeguarding your applications from a broad spectrum of threats.
Improved Performance: By filtering malicious traffic at the edge, Cloud Armor reduces the load on your backend servers, enhancing application performance.
Simplified Management: Cloud Armor offers a user-friendly interface for managing security policies and monitoring traffic patterns.
Global Scale: Cloud Armor's globally distributed network ensures consistent protection across all your GCP regions.

Implementation with a Reference Diagram

• Users access your application through the internet.
• Traffic is routed through Cloud Load Balancing, which can be integrated with Cloud Armor.
• Cloud Armor's WAF engine inspects incoming traffic, filtering out malicious requests based on pre-configured rules or custom policies.
• Legitimate traffic is forwarded to your application servers.

Sample Policy

Pros and Cons of using Cloud Armor

Pros:

• Robust security against DDoS attacks and web application vulnerabilities.
• Improved application performance and availability.
• Simplified security management with a user-friendly interface.
• Scalable protection that adapts to your application's traffic patterns.

Cons:

• Additional cost associated with Cloud Armor usage.
• May require configuration adjustments for existing applications.
• Might introduce slight latency due to additional processing at the edge.

Cost Considerations

Cloud Armor charges are based on incoming and outgoing request counts. You can leverage GCP's free tier for limited usage. Pay-as-you-go pricing applies for exceeding the free tier limits. Refer to GCP's pricing documentation for detailed cost information https://cloud.google.com/armor/pricing