Cloudflare is a leading provider of online security, performance, and reliability founded in 2009. It is used by millions of websites and applications around the world. They are committed to building a better internet and making progress towards that goal.
CloudFlare Advantages
- Pioneers in mitigating DDoS attacks with their Website Application Firewall product.
- Blocks suspicious traffic before it reaches your website, ensuring it stays available to visitors under heavy traffic or an attack when your servers are unresponsive.
- The CDN can help improve the performance of hospital websites and applications by caching content closer to users. This can lead to faster loading times and a better user experience.
- Has an “always on feature” to keep your site up even if the server is down for some reason
- Offer free and custom SSL certificates with their plans.
- Provides page rules to exclude/include certain pages/functions.
- WAF, where you can present a captcha (or block by IP, region, or country)
- You can block traffic to the WP-admin or protected pages with a captcha, by IP, by region, this keeps bot traffic from ever reaching the server
- Allows you to delegate account access no sharing of passwords
- More simultaneous users since there is less server load
Risks/ Disadvantages
You do lose control with a reverse DNS product especially. CDNs can fail, too. If the service is unavailable, it’s impossible to use your CDN and fall back to local files. If it’s just a problem with the CDN, you can clear the cache and bypass it with the click of a button.
- Cloudflare’s security features are not a replacement for your own security measures. You should still have their own security policies and procedures in place.
- It’s not a magic bullet, you should still optimize your websites and applications for performance.
- There is some cost
- Offers no server scanning service and malware removal guarantee. (this is taken care of server-side)
CloudFlare Plans
- Free Plan:
- DDoS protection up to 1 Gbps
- Web application firewall (WAF)
- Content delivery network (CDN)
- Domain Name System (DNS)
- Load balancing
- Pro Plan:
- Everything in the Free Plan
- Up to 10 Gbps of DDoS protection
- Bot management
- Origin performance optimization
- Advanced WAF rules
- Business Plan:
- Everything in the Pro Plan
- Up to 100 Gbps of DDoS protection
- Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
- Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
- Security Web Gateway (SWG)
- Remote Browser Isolation (RBI)
- Email security
- Enterprise Plan:
- Custom pricing and support
- Dedicated account manager
Resources
https://www.cloudflare.com/trust-hub/hipaa/