A website can seem totally fine to visitors, but there could be security threats hiding in the background. Bots can send thousands of requests, attackers can target login pages and sudden traffic spikes can slow down your website or even make it unavailable. This is where Cloudflare can come in.
But what exactly is Cloudflare? Is it just a security tool or does it increase website speed and reliability as well? And if you are going to invest in better protection for your website, what should you actually be looking for?
This guide will explain what Cloudflare does, how it protects websites, how its key features work and why companies turn to Cloudflare when they need better website security.
Table of Contents
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a web infrastructure and security company that is between your website and your visitors. Instead of each visitor connecting directly to your hosting server, Cloudflare can act as a middleman to filter, protect and help direct web traffic.
Cloudflare, simply put, secures sites from bad traffic while boosting performance, reliability, and delivery of content.
When an Internet user visits your website, Cloudflare can identify if the request looks legitimate or possibly malicious. Depending on the configuration, it may block suspicious traffic, challenge automated requests, cache website content and send legitimate visitors toward your website.
What Does Cloudflare Do To Your Website?
Here are some of the things Cloudflare can help you with regularly:
- How to defend websites from DDoS attacks
- Filtering of malicious/suspicious traffic
- Offering Web Application Firewall (WAF) capabilities
- Cache website content
- Improve website loading performance
- Assist to manage DNS
- Offering SSL/TLS security
- Reducing load on an origin server
- Dealing with bots and automated traffic
- Increasing website availability
What features are available depends on the plan and Cloudflare services used.
What is Cloudflare?
Think of it this way. Your site has a security guard at the gate.
Without a service like Cloudflare, visitors and automated traffic could go straight to your hosting server.
Traffic can then be routed through Cloudflare’s network in the first instance, with Cloudflare set up as a reverse proxy.
The basic process is as follows:
Visitor → Cloudflare → Security checks → Web server
Cloudflare evaluates requests before they reach your origin server.
A normal visitor might be allowed through, suspicious traffic can be blocked, challenged, rate limited or otherwise dealt with according to your security rules.
This is particularly useful if your website is getting tons of spammy automated traffic.
Why Website Security Is Important
Website security is no longer just for big corporations.
Automated attacks may target small businesses, online shops, blogs, SaaS firms, agencies and professional sites.
A security problem can cause:
- Website outages
- Loss of customer’s trust
- Reduced website speed
- Greater server utilisation of resources
- Data breach.
- Transaction Failures
- Disruption of business operations
- Cost of hosting increased
For example, consider an e-commerce site running a promotional campaign. There are hundreds of actual shoppers trying to look at products but there are thousands of automated requests coming in to the website as well.
The server has to handle all those requests.
If traffic gets too high, legitimate users may see slow pages or errors.
Correctly configured security and performance layers can help distinguish between valid traffic and suspicious requests, and reduce undue stress on the origin server.
What Does Cloudflare Do for Website Security?
One of the major reasons why businesses use Cloudflare is website security.
Let’s walk through some of the key security capabilities.
1. DDoS Protection
DDoS = Distributed Denial-of-Service.
A DDoS attack is an attempt to flood a website or online service with a large volume of traffic or requests.
Often the intent is to slow or deny access to the website to legitimate users.
Cloudflare provides DDoS protection that is designed to absorb and mitigate many forms of attacks before they reach the origin server.
This can be important for a business website, as downtime can affect both customers and revenue.
2. Application Firewall (Web
A Web Application Firewall, or WAF, can help inspect web requests, and identify traffic that may match known attack patterns, or configured security rules.
For example, a WAF can help to protect applications from common web-based threats.
Security rules help you manage how your business deals with various request types.
This is especially useful for websites that have:
- Login forms Login forms
- Customer accounts.
- Payments online
- Contact Us Forms
- APIs
- Content management systems
- E-commerce characteristics
3. Bots Management
Not all website visitors are human.
Search engines employ bots to crawl websites, and companies may use automated systems for legitimate purposes. Meanwhile, bad bots can scrape content, try to log in, generate spam, or consume server resources.
Cloudflare has tools to detect and control automated traffic.
It allows website owners to set rules for how different bots should behave on their websites.
4. SSL/TLS Protection
SSL/TLS encryption helps secure information as it travels between a visitor and a website.
You may have seen this, when a website uses HTTPS instead of HTTP.
Cloudflare provides SSL/TLS configuration to help businesses establish secure connections between visitors and their website.
This is especially important for websites that handle:
- Login Details
- Customer information
- Types
- Salary
- Account details
Your website can also be made faster with Cloudflare
Cloudflare does more than just security.
Performance is another important aspect of its value.
Cloudflare operates a global network that can help bring cached website content closer to visitors.
How Caching Works
Let’s say your website’s server is located in one geographic region, but a visitor is accessing the website from somewhere else in the world.
Sometimes cached content can be served from a location closer to the visitor, instead of asking for every static file directly from the origin server.
Cached content can include:
- Pictures
- CSS documents
- JavaScript files
- Fonts
- Other static resources
This can reduce repeated requests to your origin server, and may improve page load performance.
But caching needs to be configured properly. Pages that change often or have frequently changing content may need different caching rules.
Cloudflare DNS: Another Key Feature
DNS is short for Domain Name System.
In simple terms, DNS turns a domain name into the information needed to connect to online services.
When someone enters, for instance:
example.com
DNS helps route that query to the right destination.
Cloudflare offers DNS services that can be used by businesses to manage the DNS records of their domains.
Fast and reliable DNS is important, because DNS is part of the process that happens before visitors can properly access a website.
Reverse Proxy with Cloudflare
Understanding what Cloudflare does requires an understanding of reverse proxy.
There’s no need to connect visitors directly to your origin server – Cloudflare can take the request first.
This adds yet another layer between the public internet and your hosting infrastructure.
A simple example:
Old school setup:
Visitor Destination Server
Cloud flare config:
Visitor → Cloudflare → Host server
This extra layer can be useful for security, caching, traffic management, and performance.
It can also help hide the direct origin IP in many configurations, though website owners need to properly secure the origin server as well.
Setting Up Cloudflare for a Website
If you are thinking about using Cloudflare for your website, there are generally a few important steps to the setup.
Sign up or log in to your existing Cloudflare account and add the domain you want to manage.
Usually you have to prove that you own the domain.
Step 2: Check Your DNS Records
Cloudflare will locate the DNS records for your domain.
Check carefully before making any changes.
Significant records may include:
- A records
- AAAA DNS entries
- CNAME records
- Mail Exchanger ( MX ) records
- TXT records
Misconfigured DNS settings can lead to website access issues or email delivery problems.
Step 3: Change the Name Servers
Cloudflare typically provides you with nameservers that you need to setup with your domain registrar.
After the nameserver change propagates Cloudflare will start serving DNS for your domain.
Step 4: Set up SSL/TLS
Configure the correct SSL/TLS settings for your site.
Your hosting server must also be properly configured so secure connections will work properly.
Step 5: Define Security Rules
Don’t just turn on a security service and forget it.
Look at the security settings you have and make rules based on the needs of your website.
Perhaps you want a stronger protection around:
- /login
- /admin
- API’s
- Checkout Page
- Pages for accounts
Step 6: Caching Sets
Review content that is safe to cache.
More careful configuration is required for dynamic or personalised content, but static resources are generally easier to cache.
Step 7: Watch the Traffic
Set up and then watch your traffic and security events.
Search for:
- Requests that are blocked
- Traffic from bots
- Spike in traffic
- Changes in performance
- False positives
- Application Crashes
This enables you to tune your configuration over time.
Advantages of Cloudflare
Understanding the benefits can help you decide if a Cloudflare-powered setup is right for your website.
Improved Website Security
Cloudflare can add a layer of security between your website and the internet traffic.
DDoS Mitigation
It is capable of helping to protect websites against many forms of distributed denial-of-service traffic.
Enhanced Performance
Caching and content delivery your origin server has less work to do.
Less Server Load
By serving eligible content from the Cloudflare network, you can reduce the number of requests your hosting server needs to handle.
Reliable DNS
Cloudflare’s DNS offerings can add an extra layer of infrastructure to handle domain resolution.
Visibility into Traffic
Security and traffic analytics can help website owners understand what is happening on their websites.
A practical illustration
Imagine a small online clothing shop.
Usually, the store has 5,000 visitors a day. Then, in a seasonal sale, traffic suddenly spikes to 50, 000 requests.
Simultaneously, automated bots start to repeatedly request product pages.
The hosting server could be forced to deal with many unneeded requests without good traffic management.
With a decent Cloudflare setup, you can cache some static content, filter suspicious requests and apply some security rules to deal with unwanted traffic.
It doesn’t promise that every attack or burst of traffic will go away, but it can provide an added layer of protection and traffic control to the website.
Things to Consider Before You Buy Better Website Security
If you are searching for what Cloudflare does because you are interested in buying a website security solution, do not just look at the brand name.
Consider your real needs.
Ask Yourself These Questions
- What kind of site are you protecting?
- Do you have much bot traffic?
- Do you collect customer data on your website?
- Looking for WAF protection?
- Looking for DDoS protection?
- Do you have APIs on your website?
- Need more advanced bot management?
- How much traffic does your web site receive?
- Do you want caching and performance features?
- What’s the right level of technical control for you?
Security needs will probably be very different for a personal blog and a large e-commerce platform.
Cloudflare Is Not an Alternative to Secure Hosting
That is an important point.
Cloudflare can add an additional layer of security and performance but should not be the only security measure taken.
You still need to make sure your hosting environment is secured properly.
You may also want to consider:
- Creating Strong Passwords
- Two-factor authentication
- Software updates regularly
- Secure installation of CMS
- Malware tracking
- Backups on a regular basis
- Security on the server level
- Database configuration security
- Access control
Consider Cloudflare as part of your broader website security strategy, not your entire strategy.
Normal Website Security vs Cloudflare
Basic website security could involve an SSL certificate, firewall rules, backups and server monitoring.
You can get more sophisticated and combine these protections with a CDN, WAF, DDoS mitigation, bot management, DNS security and traffic analytics.
The right mix depends on your website, traffic, application architecture, and security requirements.
Is Cloudflare Good For Your Website?
If you ask what Cloudflare does, the simplest answer would be that it can offer a mix of security, performance, DNS, traffic management and content delivery services.
An added layer of security and performance can be useful for businesses that are highly dependent on their website being available.
But the choice of a plan should be based on your real needs and not just on the purchase of the most advanced option.
Check your website’s traffic, security risks, hosting environment, technical requirements and expected growth before you buy.
Questions & Answers
1. What does Cloudflare do to a website?
Cloudflare can help protect websites against malicious traffic, DDoS attacks and some application level threats. It can also offer DNS services, caching, content delivery, SSL/TLS features and traffic management.
2. Cloudflare is not a web hosting company.
Cloudflare is not a traditional web host (primarily). The services can be placed between your origin infrastructure and visitors, providing security, performance, DNS and other web infrastructure capabilities.
3. Does Cloudflare speed up a website?
Cloudflare can help speed things up by caching and serving content. However, the actual improvements in performance depend on the website, content, geographic location of visitors, hosting setup, and configuration.
4. No , Cloudflare does mitigate DDoS attacks .
Cloudflare offers DDoS protection to help mitigate many types of DDoS attacks. Website owners should still lock down their origin infrastructure, and implement proper server-level security controls.
5. Will Cloudflare be a good fit for my business website?
This can be useful to businesses requiring additional website security, traffic management, DNS services, or performance features. The services and configuration you choose depends on your particular requirements.
Concluding Remarks
So what is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a critical layer between your website and internet traffic. Depending on your configuration, it can help with DDoS protection, WAF security, bot management, DNS, SSL/TLS, caching, performance and traffic control.
For businesses, website security is not something you think about only after an attack happens. “Preventive steps reduce the risk and provide a better experience for real visitors.”
If you’re thinking about investing in better website security, begin by assessing your current hosting, traffic patterns, security risks and business needs. Then choose the Cloudflare services or complementary security tools that meet your needs.
Need to beef up your site security? Examine your current infrastructure. Determine your largest security loopholes . Select a web security solution that will shield your website as your business expands.
