Protecting news from digital attacks
Project Shield is a free service that uses Google technology to protect news sites and free expression from DDoS attacks on the web.
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Features
Advanced DDoS protection
Project Shield is built on Google's infrastructure, creating a multi-layer defense system to protect your site against DDoS attacks, including layer 3/4 and layer 7 attacks.
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Free, unlimited protection
No matter the size of your website or the size of the attack, Project Shield provides free protection for news, journalist, human rights, and elections monitoring sites.
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Customizable caching
Project Shield caches content to strengthen DDoS defenses and improve site performance. You can customize the cache settings to meet your site's needs.
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Real-time site analytics
Support from Google
SSL support
Fast, reliable service
Easily add new sites and admins
Bare domain support
How it works
Once you set up your website on Project Shield, here’s how we protect your site:
When someone visits your website, the request comes to Project Shield first so that we can filter out bad requests.
If it looks like the traffic is an attack, we reject the request and prevent it from reaching your server. We use a multi-layer filtering system, applying DDoS defenses at both the edge of our network and again in our data center. Requests are filtered at the edge of our network and again in our data centers.
User requests enter Google’s network at a location close to the end user, and then are proxied through the nearest Google Cloud data center. This improves performance and reduces latency.
We retrieve the requested site content either from our cache or from your server and send it back to the user. By serving content from cache, we reduce the load on your server and improve performance for the end user.
"We used to experience occasional DDoS attacks on our network of news sites, so we gave Google's Project Shield a try.
It took 30 minutes for the initial setup, followed by some optimizations over the next two days, and since then we've simply left it to run without issues.
A wonderful case of 'install and forget.' We've suffered no more attacks since, and as an extra bonus the load on our server has approximately halved."
James Pearn, CTO thelocal.com
FAQ
What is DDoS?
A DDoS attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.
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Am I at risk?
DDoS attacks are often used to attempt to censor news, human rights, and elections monitoring sites, and to bring down many other types of sites. Many sites do not have the capacity to defend against these attacks.
Do I qualify?
Project Shield welcomes applications from news, human rights, or elections monitoring organizations and individual journalists. We do not provide service to other types of content, including gaming sites and businesses. See our User Content and Conduct Policy for more details.
How do I get started?
Start by applying for Project Shield using the application form below. If your site is approved, you will receive an email with the information needed to configure Project Shield. A webmaster who has administrative privileges for the website and is able to modify DNS records should be able to set the service up in approximately 10 minutes.
How is my data used?
Project Shield only uses the data we obtain (such as logs from the Project Shield servers) for DDoS mitigation and caching and to improve the service. See this Help Center article for more details.