← Back
Application Security

Connect, protect, perform — without compromise.

One breach can cost billions. One outage can cost the quarter. One bot army can drain your inventory before you've finished your coffee. Cloudflare blocks the attacks before they reach your code — every layer, every request, every day.

$10B+
in damages from MOVEit supply-chain breach — 95M+ people affected (2024)
60%
of small businesses fold within 6 months of a major breach
~215B
cyber threats Cloudflare blocks every day (2026)
explore the layers
DDoS Protection

When the flood comes, you're already behind the dam.

DDoS attacks don't ask permission. They show up in volume, at any layer, at any hour. Cloudflare's network absorbs them automatically — no rules to write, no pages to wake up to. Your origin keeps serving real users while the attack hits a wall it can't break.

Volumetric flood · absorbed at the edge illustrative · the wall doesn't move
attack volume hitting edge 5.6 Tbps
reaching your origin 0 bps
5.6 Tbps
largest single attack mitigated by Cloudflare (Oct 2024) — autonomously, in seconds
Always-on
no toggles, no thresholds, no on-call pages — protection runs by default
L3 / L4 / L7
network, transport, and application — every layer of the stack defended at the edge
~329 Tbps
total Cloudflare network capacity — bigger than any attack ever observed
Security Rules

Three filters. Zero changes to your code.

Every request passes three checkpoints before reaching your origin: Managed Rules stop the known-bad payloads, Custom Rules enforce your own business logic, and Rate Limiting Rules stop the abuse that looks legitimate one request at a time. All edge-applied. All centrally managed. All without touching your application.

Layered defense · request → managed → custom → rate-limit → origin illustrative · most attacks die at gate 1
Managed Rules

We write them. We update them. You stay protected.

Zero-day CVEs (e.g. Log4Shell) Network-wide patch in minutes · industry avg: 60+ days to patch
🔑 Leaked-credentials check $4.88M avg cost of a data breach when credentials leak (IBM 2024)
Custom Rules

Your policy, applied at the edge.

🌍 Geo-block by country / ASN Compliance-ready · zero sanctioned-region traffic reaches origin
🛂 Managed challenge on /login Stops automated brute-force · keeps real users frictionless
Rate Limiting Rules

Count what matters. Stop abuse at the edge.

🚪 5 logins/min per IP — block 10m Credential-stuffing fraud: $6B+/yr in e-commerce losses (Forrester)
✉️ Cap /signup at 3/hr per IP Stops fake-account farms before free-trial credits drain margin
3 layers
managed + custom + rate-limit, applied in order at every PoP
Zero code
no SDKs, no app-server agents, no library upgrades to chase
<60s
to propagate a new managed rule to every Cloudflare PoP, globally
One UI
all three rule types managed from a single dashboard view
API Shield

More than half your traffic is APIs. Defend them like it.

Modern apps don't ship HTML — they ship JSON. APIs are machine-readable, often undocumented, and the shortest path between an attacker and your data. API Shield discovers what you've got, validates what comes in, and scans what goes out.

Discover · Validate · Scan illustrative · request in, response out
API Discovery

Find what you didn't know you had.

🔍 Shadow APIs auto-catalogued Shadow & undocumented APIs are the #1 root cause of API breaches (OWASP API Top 10)
📊 Traffic + auth status per endpoint Spot unauthenticated endpoints before attackers do — visibility = first line of defense
Schema Validation

Reject what doesn't fit.

📐 OpenAPI / GraphQL enforcement Broken object property authorization = OWASP API #3 — schemas catch it at the edge
🚫 Block extra or missing fields Stops mass-assignment attacks · zero origin code changes
Sensitive Data Detection

Stop the leak before it lands.

💳 Credit card numbers (PCI) PCI-DSS non-compliance: $5K–$100K/month in fines per merchant (Visa)
🔑 API keys / secrets in responses Avg cost when secrets leak: $4.88M per incident (IBM 2024)
57%+
of web traffic is now APIs — and growing
Auto
endpoint discovery — no manual cataloging
Bring your spec
OpenAPI / GraphQL schemas you already have
Compliance
PCI · HIPAA · GDPR signal coverage out of the box
The bottom line

Cyber security is a board-level conversation.
We keep it a quiet one.

One breach. One outage. One wave. The cost is real — and it shows up on the board's agenda. Cloudflare runs every layer of defense at the edge so the next attack stays a non-event, not a headline.

$5,600
average cost per minute of downtime (Gartner)
277 days
to identify and contain a breach without proactive defense (IBM 2024)
Hours
from CVE disclosure to network-wide protection
1 dashboard
DDoS · WAF · API Shield · every layer in one place