How it works
A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is very important for high-speed and efficient operation of your website. It can distribute your content and push it through servers located at various places throughout the world to ensure fast loading times. CDN is a great way to enhance user experience while improving security for your site. In fact, with the activation of the WAF (Web Application Firewall) integrated in the CDN, bad bots are filtered before they reach your server.
Once your DNS points to CloudFilt, every visitor reaches the closest point of presence of the network. The request is scored there: real users are forwarded to your origin server, doubtful visitors get a captcha, and bad bots are dropped before they cost you a single CPU cycle.
This way, you benefit from a much faster and more secure web experience for your users, while minimizing security risks. Nothing to install on your server, nothing to update: the protection covers every page of the domain, whatever the CMS or the framework behind it.
Request floods and DDoS
Because the CDN sits in front of your server, it takes the load first. Connections and TLS end on CloudFilt servers, blocked requests never reach your origin, and the number of simultaneous connections opened to your server is capped. Cached files keep being served even when your server slows down.
This limits the impact of a flood, it does not make your site immune to it. Your server stays under its cap, but some visitors may get an error page while the attack lasts. A large volumetric attack, aimed at the network itself, goes beyond what the CDN absorbs. And your origin server should only accept traffic from CloudFilt: if its IP address is known, an attacker can bypass the CDN entirely.
