Amazon Web Services Unveils New Cyber Security Service -- Update

By Jay Greene and Laura Stevens 

LAS VEGAS-- Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud-computing unit unveiled a new service to help protect customers against cyberattacks of the sort that rendered dozens of popular websites unreachable for parts of a day last month.

Amazon Web Services introduced AWS Shield, a service that will be turned on by default for its customers. The company said that Shield will help customers defend against so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks that can knock websites offline by flooding them with junk data, blocking the way for legitimate users.

"This will really help you protect yourselves even against the largest and most sophisticated attacks that we've seen," said Werner Vogels, Amazon chief technical officer at the annual conference for the retail giant's cloud-computing unit here.

The company is offering two levels of protection. AWS Shield Standard monitors incoming web traffic for customers and uses anomaly algorithms and other analysis techniques to detect malicious traffic in real-time. The company also announced AWS Shield Advanced, a version designed to protect against more aggressive and sophisticated attacks.

Mr. Vogels said the two offerings were both generally available immediately. AWS will include Shield Standard at no extra charge for customers. AWS Shield Advanced will cost $3,000 more each month, in addition to variable data-related costs.

Last month's attacks affected high-profile websites including Netflix, Twitter, PayPal, and The Wall Street Journal.

Security is one of the biggest concerns for companies making the transition from operating their own data centers to buying access to computing resources over the web from companies such as AWS. Mr. Vogels stressed during his keynote that security was the highest priority in Amazon's operations.

Write to Jay Greene at [e-mail] and Laura Stevens at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 01, 2016 14:47 ET (19:47 GMT)

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