Cloudflare
By Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a global cloud services company providing a content delivery network (CDN), DNS, DDoS protection, and Zero Trust security products that sit in front of websites and applications to speed them up and protect them from attacks.
Definition
Cloudflare is a global cloud services company providing a content delivery network (CDN), DNS, DDoS protection, and Zero Trust security products that sit in front of websites and applications to speed them up and protect them from attacks.
Overview
Cloudflare operates one of the largest global networks of data centers, positioned so that a request from a user anywhere in the world can be handled by a nearby point of presence rather than traveling all the way to an origin server. Its CDN caches static content close to visitors, while its DNS service resolves domain lookups quickly and reliably, together improving both latency and uptime for sites of any size. Security is a major part of Cloudflare's offering: it absorbs and mitigates large-scale DDoS attacks, provides a web application firewall (WAF) to block common exploit patterns, and issues free TLS certificates so that HTTPS is essentially free and automatic for any site behind it. Its Zero Trust suite (including products like Access and WARP) extends similar network-level protection to corporate applications and remote workforces, replacing traditional VPNs with identity-aware access controls. Cloudflare has also expanded well beyond its CDN roots into edge compute (Workers), object storage (R2), and developer platforms that let applications run logic and store data close to users at the network edge — competing in that space with platforms like Vercel and Netlify. Its DNS, CDN, and security fundamentals are commonly covered alongside broader cloud security education.
Key Features
- Global CDN caching content close to end users for lower latency
- Authoritative DNS service with fast, reliable resolution
- DDoS protection absorbing large-scale volumetric attacks
- Web application firewall (WAF) blocking common exploit patterns
- Free, automatic TLS/HTTPS certificate issuance and renewal
- Zero Trust products (Access, WARP) for secure remote access without a traditional VPN
- Workers platform for running serverless code at the network edge
- R2 object storage with no egress fees