Final answer:
WAF and AWS Shield are both security services by AWS but serve different purposes. WAF provides rule-based traffic control to protect against web exploits, while AWS Shield offers DDoS protection with its Standard and Advanced tiers.
Step-by-step explanation:
Difference Between WAF and AWS Shield
The WAF (Web Application Firewall) and AWS Shield are both security services offered by Amazon Web Services that provide protection for web applications. The WAF is a service designed to protect web applications by controlling the incoming and outgoing traffic based on predetermined security rules. It helps protect web applications against common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS Shield, on the other hand, is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides two levels of protection: Standard and Advanced. The Standard tier is automatically applied to all AWS customers at no additional cost and provides basic DDoS protection. The Advanced tier offers enhanced protection for web applications with additional features like attack detection and mitigation, and it also includes access to 24x7 support from the AWS DDoS Response Team (DRT). In summary, while both services aim to improve security, WAF is more focused on managing specific types of web traffic to protect web applications against certain attacks, whereas AWS Shield focuses primarily on protecting against DDoS attacks.