With offering the ability to protect your applications and websites against denial of service and web attacks, Google Cloud Armor has become the first choice for many top organizations. This service helps in identifying and mitigating attacks against your Cloud Load Balancing workloads while also delivering DDoS protection and WAF at Google scale. But, this is not just it! This service has much more to explore. That is to say, in this blog, we will cover the major areas of Google Cloud Armor service and understand its security working policies more accurately.
What is Google Cloud Armor?
Google Cloud Armor is a web application security service offered by Google Cloud. It provides layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) DDoS protection, IP and geographical access control, and security policy enforcement for your web applications running on Google Cloud.
With Cloud Armor, you can define security policies that control access to your applications based on IP addresses, regions, and other criteria. The service also includes built-in DDoS protection to defend against common network and application attacks.
Cloud Armor integrates with Google Cloud’s global network and other security services, such as Google Cloud Load Balancing, to provide comprehensive security for your web applications.
By using Cloud Armor, you can secure your web applications running on Google Cloud and ensure that they are protected against common security threats such as DDoS attacks, IP spoofing, and malicious traffic.
Benefits of Cloud Armor:
Google Cloud Armor offers several benefits for protecting your web applications on Google Cloud:
- DDoS protection: Cloud Armor provides built-in protection against common network and application-layer DDoS attacks, helping to ensure the availability of your web applications.
- Access control: You can use Cloud Armor to define and enforce access control policies based on IP addresses, regions, and other criteria, helping to prevent unauthorized access to your applications.
- Integration with Google Cloud services: Cloud Armor integrates with other Google Cloud security services, such as Google Cloud Load Balancing, to provide comprehensive security for your applications.
- Scalability: Cloud Armor is fully managed and automatically scales to meet the demands of your applications, providing reliable protection without the need for manual intervention.
- Cost-effective: With Cloud Armor, you only pay for what you use, making it a cost-effective solution for protecting your web applications on Google Cloud.
- Easy to use: Cloud Armor has a simple, user-friendly interface that makes it easy to set up and manage security policies for your web applications.
Working of Google Cloud Armor:
- For applications or services behind external HTTP(S) load balancers, SSL proxy load balancers, or TCP proxy load balancers, Google Cloud Armor provides always-on DDoS protection against network or protocol-based volumetric DDoS assaults.
- Secondly, the DDoS protection from Google Cloud Armor is always on and scales to the capacity of Google’s worldwide network. It can identify and mitigate network threats in real time, thus allowing only well-formed requests to get through load balancing proxies.
- Thirdly, the security policies enable backend services behind an external HTTP(S) load balancer to apply custom Layer 7 filtering policies, including pre-configured WAF rules to minimize the OWASP web application vulnerability concerns.
- Lastly, there is an option to allow or refuse access to your external HTTP(S) load balancer at the Google Cloud edge, as near as feasible to the source of incoming traffic, using Google Cloud Armor security settings. Moreover, the unwanted traffic can stop from consuming resources or accessing your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks as a result of this.
The external HTTP(S) load balancers, the Google network, and Google data centers are in the figure below.
Summarizing Working:
Google Cloud Armor works by providing layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) security for your web applications running on Google Cloud. It provides this security by integrating with Google Cloud Load Balancer and other Google Cloud security services.
When a request is made to your web application, it is first redirected to Google Cloud Load Balancer, which forwards the request to Cloud Armor. Cloud Armor then evaluates the request against the security policies you have defined for your application. If the request meets the criteria specified in your policies, it is allowed to reach your application. If the request does not meet the criteria, it is blocked.
In addition to access control, Cloud Armor also provides DDoS protection for your web applications. It uses advanced security techniques to detect and mitigate network and application-layer DDoS attacks in real time. This makes it easier to maintain the accessibility of your web apps even in times of heavy traffic and assault.
In conclusion, Google Cloud Armor offers a thorough and affordable solution for protecting your web apps on Google Cloud. It provides scalable defense against typical security risks like DDoS assaults and illegal access, connects with other Google Cloud security services, and is simple to use.
What are the features of Google Cloud Armor?
The top-most features of Google Cloud Armor include:
1. Rules language
- In a security policy, Google Cloud Armor allows you to define prioritized rules with adjustable match criteria and actions. However, if a rule is the highest priority rule whose characteristics match the attributes of the incoming request, it takes effect, meaning the set action executes.
2. Preconfigured WAF rules
- Preconfigured rules in Google Cloud Armor help secure your online apps and services from typical internet assaults and minimize the OWASP Top 10 risks. However, rather than forcing you to declare each signature individually, the rules allow Google Cloud Armor to analyze different traffic signatures by referring to neatly labeled rules. ModSecurity Core Rule Set 3.0.2 is the source of the rule (CRS).
3. Real-time security
- Cloud Armor provides real-time security for your web applications, helping to protect against attacks and ensuring that your applications remain available.
4. Managed Protection
- Managed Protection refers to a managed application protection solution that helps in defending your online applications and services from internet dangers such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults. Further, this offers you access to WAF rules and provides you with always-on safeguards for your load balancer.
5. Adaptive Protection
- By monitoring traffic patterns to your backend services, detecting and warning on suspected assaults, and providing proposed WAF rules to mitigate such attacks, Adaptive Protection helps you in protecting your apps and services against L7 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. However, these rules can be customized for matching your specific requirements. And, the Adaptive Protection can activate per-security policy, however, it needs a project with a current Managed Protection subscription.
6. Support for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments
- Whether your application is built on Google Cloud or in a hybrid or multi-cloud architecture, cloud armor can help protect it from DDoS or web assaults and enforce Layer 7 security regulations.
7. Bot management
- Through native integration with reCAPTCHA Enterprise, Cloud Armor provides automatic bot protection for your apps and helps stop fraud in line and at the edge.
8. Rate limiting
- Rate-based restrictions safeguard your apps from excessive volumes of requests that overload your instances and stop genuine users from accessing them.
9. Visibility and monitoring
- In the Cloud Monitoring dashboard of Cloud Armor, you can simply monitor all of the metrics linked with your security rules. Further, in the Security Command Center dashboard, you can also see suspicious application traffic patterns via Cloud Armor.
10. Integration with Google Cloud services
- Cloud Armor integrates with other Google Cloud security services, such as Google Cloud Load Balancer, to provide comprehensive security for your applications.
11. Access control
- You can use Cloud Armor to define and enforce access control policies based on IP addresses, regions, and other criteria, helping to prevent unauthorized access to your applications.
12. DDoS protection
- Cloud Armor provides built-in protection against common network and application-layer DDoS attacks, helping to ensure the availability of your web applications.
Beginning with Cloud Armor Security policies
Whether the apps are on Google Cloud, in a hybrid deployment, or in a multi-cloud architecture, use Google Cloud Armor security policies to protect applications operating behind a load balancer against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and other web-based threats. Moreover, the security policies can be manually specified, including match criteria and actions that can be customized.
Further, layer 7 screening and scrubbing incoming requests for typical web exploits or other Layer 7 attributes to possibly stop traffic before it reaches your load-balanced backend services or backend buckets are provided by Google Cloud Armor security rules.
You must know that only backend services behind an external HTTP(S) load balancer can use Google Cloud Armor security settings. Premium Tier or Standard Tier load balancers are available.
Protecting Google Cloud deployments with Google Cloud Armor security policies:
HTTP(S) Load Balancing is implemented in Google’s points of presence (PoPs) throughout the world at the network’s edge. User traffic sent to an external HTTP(S) load balancer routes to the PoP nearest to the user in Premium Tier. Then, it is load-balanced throughout Google’s worldwide network to the nearest backend with enough capacity. Following that, user traffic routes through Google’s network via peering, ISP, or transit networks in the region where your Google Cloud services deploy under Standard Tier.
Further, you can allow, refuse, or divert requests to your external HTTP(S) load balancer at the Google Cloud edge, as near as possible to the source of incoming traffic, using Google Cloud Armor security settings.
Requirements:
To use Google Cloud Armor security policies, you must meet the following requirements:
- Firstly, the load balancer must be an HTTP(S) load balancer that is external.
- Secondly, the load balancing mechanism for the backend service must be EXTERNAL.
- Lastly, the protocol of the backend service must be HTTP, HTTPS, or HTTP/2.
Types of security policies:
The type of security policy are:
1. Backend security policies
- An external HTTP(S) load balancer provides backend services, which are protected by backend security controls. They can filter requests and safeguard backend services that contain instance groups or network endpoint groups (NEGs), such as internet, zonal, and serverless NEGs.
2. Edge security policies
- Users can define filtering and access control policies for content that is stored, such as Cloud CDN-enabled backend services and Cloud Storage buckets, using edge security policies. In comparison to backend security rules, edge security policies offer filtering based on a subset of parameters.
- Further, requests can filter using edge security policies before being provided from Google’s cache. Moreover, its policies install and enforce at Google’s network’s outermost perimeter, upstream of the Cloud CDN cache. You must know that they can apply to a backend service at the same time, independent of the resources that the backend service refers to. And, backend buckets can only be protected by edge security controls.
Pricing of Google Cloud Armor
Cloud Armor Standard has a pay-as-you-go approach, which evaluates and charges for security policies and rules inside those policies. This is a fully-formed L7 request that is reviewed by a security policy.
Google Cloud Armor pricing is based on usage, and you only pay for what you use. The exact cost will depend on factors such as the volume of requests processed by Cloud Armor, the number of security policies you have defined, and the level of DDoS protection required for your web applications.
In general, Cloud Armor is a cost-effective solution for securing your web applications on Google Cloud. It provides flexible pricing options and allows you to scale up or down as your needs change, helping to ensure that you only pay for the security you need.
To get an accurate estimate of the cost of using Google Cloud Armor, you can use the Google Cloud pricing calculator. This tool allows you to estimate the cost of using Cloud Armor based on your specific requirements and provides a detailed breakdown of the costs associated with using the service.
Overall, Google Cloud Armor is a cost-effective solution for securing your web applications on Google Cloud. Its flexible pricing options and scalability make it an ideal choice for organizations of all sizes.
Final Words
The key security rules, advantages, and workings of Google Cloud Armor have all been discussed above. Several prestigious firms are receiving answers from our service. As an illustration, Evernote moved to Google Clouds in order to build a more adaptable and secure architecture. So start matching your needs if you’re interested in Google Cloud Armor. Also, utilize the cloud armor documentation to get this going!
