Introduction

In today's digital age, the importance of information security has become increasingly prominent. As enterprises and organizations rely on cloud services to store, process, and transmit data, safeguarding network resources from attacks has become crucial. Cloud network defense has become an integral part of maintaining organizational security. By combining powerful security technologies and network infrastructure, cloud network defense can provide highly reliable and scalable security protection, helping organizations cope with increasingly complex network attacks. This article delves into the importance, core principles, and best practices of cloud network defense to help organizations establish robust defensive networks.

Specific Technologies and Best Practices for Cloud Network Defense

In a cloud environment, utilizing services and features provided by public clouds can enhance network defense. Here are some specific technologies and best practices that can be implemented with public cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud:

1. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): Known as VPC in AWS, Virtual Private Cloud in GCP, and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in Alibaba Cloud, these services allow you to establish isolated private network environments on public clouds. You can customize network configurations, set up firewall rules, and monitor network traffic and logs.
2. Security Groups and Network Access Control Lists: AWS and GCP provide the concept of Security Groups, while Alibaba Cloud offers Network Access Control Lists. These features enable you to control network access for virtual machines and resources by configuring inbound and outbound rules, achieving fine-grained network security management.
3. Firewall Services: AWS offers services like AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) and AWS Shield, while GCP provides Cloud Armor, and Alibaba Cloud offers Web Application Firewall. These services can detect and block malicious network traffic, providing an additional layer of protection for network applications.
4. Security Monitoring and Log Management: AWS offers services like AWS CloudTrail and Amazon GuardDuty, GCP provides Cloud Audit Logs and Cloud Security Command Center, and Alibaba Cloud offers log services and security centers. These services monitor network activities, detect potential threats, and generate security logs for timely identification and response to security incidents.
5. DDoS Defense: AWS provides AWS Shield, GCP offers Google Cloud Armor, and Alibaba Cloud provides services like Anti-DDoS Pro and Anti-DDoS Premium. These services can detect and mitigate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, ensuring network availability and connectivity.
6. Encryption and Key Management: AWS offers AWS Key Management Service (KMS), GCP provides Google Cloud Key Management Service (KMS), and Alibaba Cloud offers Key Management Service. These services help encrypt data, manage keys, and ensure the confidentiality of data during transmission and storage.

Using Alibaba Cloud Anti-DDoS Premium as an Example

In "Anti-DDoS,""Anti"is a prefix that indicates"opposition"or"counteraction.""Anti-DDoS" refers to solutions or services aimed at opposing or counteracting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.It is a protective mechanism against DDoS attacks.It is designed to mitigate or prevent the impact of attacks on network infrastructure and applications by using countermeasures.For example, with features like traffic monitoring, attack detection and blocking, Anti-DDoS services can effectively protect networks from the damage of DDoS attacks.

Content includes:

1. DDoS Premium: Redirects traffic to Alibaba Cloud's global DDoS protection network through DNS resolution, cleans traffic-type and resource-exhaustion-type DDoS attacks, and hides protected source server addresses.
2. Tbps-level protection capability: Building DDoS cleaning centers worldwide, constructing a BGP protection network with a total bandwidth exceeding 10 Tbps.
3. Comprehensive protocol protection: Supports protection against DDoS attacks from network layer/transport layer (L3/4) to application layer (L7).
4. Source server protection: By accessing protection services through reverse proxy, hides the real source server address, and sends cleaned business traffic back to Alibaba Cloud products or offline data centers.
5. Source server offloading: By accessing the DDoS high-defense network, protecting against DDoS attacks while reusing connections to reduce backend source server connection loads and improve source server service efficiency.

   

Using Alibaba Cloud WAF as an Example

WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Deploy WAF protection at the frontend of web applications, set up a shield between web applications and the internet, and use Proxy servers for reverse proxy to protect client machines through intermediate services.

1. Provide automatic protection for 0-day vulnerabilities in web applications, without manual patching and repair, and help effectively reduce risks such as web application intrusion by hackers and viruses, webpage tampering, web crawling, and data leakage.
2. Protection against hackers using CC attack software to control zombie computers for CC attacks.
3. 0Day vulnerabilities are quickly and automatically repaired through virtual patching, solving problems such as the difficulty of code reconstruction and long cycles.
4. Actively review and identify abandoned/obsolete, lack of permission, and rate-limited data interfaces and assets, reducing the risk of data leakage.
5. Automatic interception of scanning and probing.

Security Awareness Training and Policy Compliance: In addition to technical measures, establishing a comprehensive security awareness training program to educate users and administrators about best practices in network security and policy compliance is crucial.

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