Using Cloudflare security to stop cyber attacks in their tracks.

For business and website owners, it can feel like security threats are lurking around every corner of the internet. And that they’re becoming harder to spot and fight off.

The stats, unfortunately, back up that hunch. According to a government survey, 50% of UK businesses experienced some form of cyber security breach or attack in the previous 12 months.

Ever since the birth of the internet, there’s been a risk from cyber attacks. But attackers are now using increasingly complex and aggressive methods to gain access to sensitive data, flood your systems so they stop working or make your website less competitive.

Two of the more common forms of cyber attack on the scene these days are denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Cloudflare is one of the most trusted solutions for preventing these types of attacks, It aims to improve website security without damaging site performance.

In this post, we look at how Cloudflare protects websites from cyber threats — like DoS and DDoS — and why, here at Radical, we regularly incorporate Cloudflare services into our client websites.

What is a DoS attack?

A denial-of-service attack is an attempt to overwhelm your server, network or website with a high volume of requests. This causes your website to slow down or become completely unavailable for users. A DoS attack is typically launched from a single computer.

What is a DDoS attack?

Like a DoS attack, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack bombards your server, network or website with a high volume of traffic or requests. But unlike a DoS attack, a DDoS attack is launched from a network of computers or devices.

DDoS attacks can be very disruptive and difficult to prevent because they originate from thousands or even millions of infected sources worldwide.

Cyber attackers use both DoS and DDoS attacks to prevent your website from working properly, impacting your business and your bottom line. They may demand a ransom payment to return things to normal or they may simply enjoy causing chaos.

What we do know is that DDoS attacks are on the rise. There were an average of 1,700 attacks per day in 2023. Which is why website owners need a strong line of defence. That’s where Cloudflare comes in.

Cloudflare DDoS protection explained

Cloudflare provides cloud security services. It acts as a protective layer between your website and the internet, keeping your site secure and making it faster, too.

Cloudflare DDoS protection defends your site against both DoS and DDoS attacks. When an attacker attempts to overload a server with requests, Cloudflare spreads the requests across its network of servers, ensuring that the original server does not become overloaded.

Additionally, DDoS protection from Cloudflare blocks malicious requests before they reach the server, helps to camouflage the server’s true IP address and can provide additional security features such as a web application firewall (WAF).

One of the most important features of Cloudflare protection is that it can detect malicious bots and unnatural traffic, so access to your site won’t be cut off for genuine users during peak times.

The four stages of Cloudflare DDoS protection

There are four overall stages to Cloudflare DDoS protection: detecting, responding, routing and adapting. Let’s take a look at what happens at each of those stages.

Detecting

The first stage involves detecting unusual spikes in activity. For this to be done effectively a site has to tell the difference between high traffic volumes linked to attacks and high traffic volumes that are a natural fluctuation from your baseline.

Responding

In response to unnatural traffic spikes, the network will drop traffic identified as malicious while absorbing the rest. This is done using a WAF.

Routing

DDoS and DoS mitigation services route traffic adaptively to prevent system overload. This involves splitting the traffic into more manageable chunks and distributing it across the network.

Adapting

A robust system adapts to your needs as they change. This looks different for each system and website but includes measures such as IP blocking, banning traffic from certain geographical areas and recognising where protocols have not been used correctly.

Other cyber security risks and how Cloudflare security helps protect against them

Cloudflare is known for its DDoS protection. But it offers excellent protection against a range of cyber threats. Here are some of the other cyber attacks that Cloudflare security helps to prevent:

• SQL injection (SQLi): Attackers manipulate database queries to steal, delete or alter data from a website’s database.
• Cross-site scripting (XSS): Attackers exploit website vulnerabilities to inject malicious scripts into webpages, which then execute in users’ browsers, often stealing login credentials or spreading malware.
• Cross-site request forgery (CSRF): Attackers trick website users into making unauthorised transactions by embedding malicious requests within a trusted website session. CSRF is often used alongside phishing attacks.
• Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks: An attacker intercepts communications between a user and your website to steal or manipulate data, including passwords and bank details.

Cloudflare has a couple of different security solutions to protect websites against these types of cyber risks.

Web application firewall (WAF)

Cloudflare’s web application firewall (WAF) acts as a shield for your website, identifying and blocking malicious requests. You can use Cloudflare’s WAF dashboard to build rules, deciding what does and doesn’t get through the firewall.

SSL certificates

Cloudflare provides free SSL certificates for every website on one of its plans, ensuring that all traffic between users and servers is encrypted. This helps prevent data interception from MITM attacks.

DNS security (DNSSEC)

DNS security (DNSSEC) protects your website from DNS hijacking, ensuring visitors aren’t redirected to fake or malicious websites.

Bot management

Cloudflare’s bot management feature helps you stop bot attacks. It blocks credential stuffing, content scraping and inventory hoarding, without relying on CAPTCHAs that can harm the user experience.

How Cloudflare supports website performance

Cloudflare doesn’t just protect against cyber attacks. It also enhances website speed, performance and reliability — and it can even help you lower your website costs. Here’s what else Cloudflare can do for your website.

• Website speed optimisation. Because Cloudflare caches your website content across a global network of servers, it helps your site load faster for visitors across the world. It doesn’t matter where they’re accessing your site from. Cloudflare will use the servers nearest to a user to deliver web content quickly.
• Load balancing. When your site experiences a high volume of traffic, Cloudflare spreads the load across multiple servers. This improves performance.
• SEO. By improving page load speeds and site security, Cloudflare helps to improve the SEO of your website.
• Buying a domain name. You can buy a domain name from Cloudflare, too. Unlike many other domain registrars, Cloudflare is transparent in its pricing. Prices don’t go up when you renew so you can count on the same price year after year.
• Keeping server costs down. Whether you’re using a dedicated server, a cloud server or a shared server, Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) reduces the strain you put on your primary server, which can reduce server costs.

Want to get Cloudflare security working for your website?

With cyber attackers finding new and innovative ways to damage websites and businesses, it pays to have a product like Cloudflare on your team. Cloudflare services help you stay ahead of cyber criminals, protecting your site (and business bank balance) from a range of cyber security threats.

Getting started with Cloudflare is easy. But, you’ll likely need the help of an experienced web developer to configure and optimise things like your firewall, encryption and caching rules. It can be a process of fine tuning, finding the right balance between performance and security for your business website.

Here at Radical, we love working with Cloudflare. We think it offers good value and a host of really useful tools for our clients. So if you’re interested in incorporating Cloudflare services into your website setup, we’re happy to help.

Whether you’re looking for web design and development services or web hosting and support, we can weave Cloudflare into your website so it provides rock-solid security and top performance.

Get in touch with the Radical team to chat about your project today.