Developer Center / ...
Build on AWS edge services
Performance and availability
Internet users increasingly expect responsive web applications and APIs with lower latency and higher availability. Fast and reliable user experiences contribute to better ranking on search engines, and increased user engagement.
Addressing risks of cyberthreats
Serverless at the edge
Developers are looking for tools to help them easily build modern web applications, and seamlessly integrate with origins in the Cloud or on prem.
Developers looking to keep their web application performant, resilient, and secure, introduce AWS edge services to their hosting infrastructure. AWS edge services encompass Amazon CloudFront, a global Content Delivery Network, AWS WAF, a security control to manage application layer threats, edge functions such as Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions to supercharge the functionalities of web applications, and AWS Global Accelerator, a network level accelerator.
Incorporating AWS edge services into web application technology stacks adds multiple benefits:
- Faster web: With caching, image/text compression, and modern internet protocols like HTTP/3 and TLS 1.3. Static and dynamic applications are accelerated by terminating TLS connections close to viewers from distributed edge locations, maintaining persistent TCP connections to origins over AWS’s private backbone network.
- Higher reliability: With origin failovers, connection retries, and multi-Region architectures.
- More security controls: such as TLS policy enforcements, access control, DDoS protection at infrastructure layer, blocking HTTP floods using AWS WAF, managing automated bot traffic using Bot Control and preventing CVE exploits using managed rules for AWS WAF by AWS Threat research team.
- Functionalities at the Edge: Centralize operations like redirections, authorization or A/B testing across micro-services at the edge, enable dynamic origin routing and request adaptation, etc..
Featured talks
Total results: 29
- Date
-
Practical applications of edge compute in Amazon CloudFront, with AppsFlyer testimony
With an increasingly more powerful serverless environment coupled with content delivery network (CDN) capabilities, Amazon CloudFront empowers developers to build web applications that execute functions closer to end users, tailoring content delivery to the unique needs of users. This session delves into how to leverage the latest edge compute features while optimizing for both performance and scalability. Learn best practices and patterns for deploying custom logic at the edge, enabling you to harness the full potential of CloudFront's evolving features.AWS re:Invent 20242024-12-09 -
I didn’t know AWS WAF did this
Securing web applications in today’s ever-evolving threat landscape is crucial. As threats evolve, so must security controls and countermeasures. In this chalk talk, dive into how AWS WAF seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, making it possible for you to construct a resilient, multi-layered defense strategy. Learn about uncommon use cases and how to address even the most unconventional threats.AWS re:Invent 20242024-12-08
Reference whitepapers
Total results: 5
-
Whitepaper
Implementing a bot control strategy on AWS
The internet as we know it would not be possible without bots. Bots run automated tasks over the internet and simulate human activity or interaction. They allow businesses to build efficiency into processes and tasks. Useful bots, like web crawlers, index information on the internet and help us quickly find the most relevant information for our search queries. Bots are a good mechanism to improve business and provide value to companies. However, with time, bad actors started using bots as a means to abuse existing systems and applications in new and creative ways. Botnets are the best-known mechanism to scale bots and their impact. Botnets are networks of bots that are infected by malware and are under the control of a single party, known as the bot herder or bot operator. From one central point, the operator can command every computer on its botnet to simultaneously carry out a coordinated action, which is why botnets are also referred to as command-and-control (C2) systems. The scale of a botnet can be many millions of bots. A botnet helps the operator to perform large-scale actions. Because botnets remain under the control of a remote operator, infected machines can receive updates and change their behavior on the fly. As a result, for significant financial gain, C2 systems can rent access to segments of their botnet on the black market. The prevalence of botnets has continued to grow. It is considered by experts to be the favorite tool of bad actors. Mirai is one of the biggest botnets. It emerged in 2016, is still operational, and is estimated to have infected up to 350,000 Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This botnet has been adapted and used for many types of activities, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. More recently, bad actors tried to further obfuscate their activity and source their traffic by obtaining IP addresses through the use of residential proxy services. This creates a legitimate interconnected, peer-to-peer system that adds sophistication to the activity and makes it more challenging to detect and mitigate. This document focuses on the bot landscape, its effect on your applications, and the available strategies and mitigation options. This prescriptive guidance and its best practices help you understand and mitigate different types of bot attacks. In addition, this guide describes the AWS services and features that support a bot mitigation strategy and how each one can help you protect your applications. It also includes an overview of bot monitoring and best practices for optimizing solution costs.2024-02-24 -
Whitepaper
Amazon CloudFront for Media Streaming
This whitepaper is for media organizations interested in delivering streaming media content to their viewers using Amazon CloudFront. Media delivery has a unique set of characteristics requiring low latency, high reliability, and high scalability.2023-09-13 -
Whitepaper
Secure Content Delivery with Amazon CloudFront
This whitepaper describes how Amazon CloudFront, a highly secure, managed service, can help architects and developers secure the delivery of their applications and content by providing useful, security-supporting features.2022-01-11