A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is an attempt to render your service or application
unavailable to your end users. With Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, the
attackers use multiple resources (often a large number of compromised
hosts/instances) to orchestrate large scale attacks against targets.
The Apigee architecture creates a peering connection between two networks: a Google-managed
tenant project (the Apigee VPC) and a customer-managed project (the
Customer VPC). To mitigate or prevent DoS attacks on these networks, be sure to follow the
Best
Practices for DDoS Protection and Mitigation on Google Cloud Platform (PDF).
If you expose your APIs externally, you can be vulnerable to DoS attacks. To mitigate this,
Cloud Load Balancing includes some built-in protections, including:
Protection by Google Frontend infrastructure: With Cloud Load
Balancing, the Google frontend infrastructure terminates user traffic and automatically scales to
absorb certain types of attacks (such as SYN floods) before they reach your Compute Engine
instances.
Anycast-based Load Balancing: Cloud Load Balancing enables a single anycast
IP to front-end
Apigee instances in all regions. Traffic is directed to the closest backend; in the event of a
DDoS attack, GCLB increases the surface area to absorb the attack by moving traffic to instances
with available capacity in any region where backends are deployed.
In addition to Cloud Load Balancing, you can add Google Cloud Armor to protect your API endpoints
against DoS and web attacks. Cloud Armor provides benefits such as:
IP-based and geo-based access control: Filter your incoming traffic based on
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses or address ranges (CIDRs). Enforce geography-based access controls to
allow or deny traffic based on source geo using Google's geoIP mapping.
Support for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments: Help defend applications from
DDoS or web attacks and enforce Layer 7 security policies whether your application is deployed
on Google Cloud or in a hybrid or multi-cloud architecture.
Visibility and monitoring: Easily monitor all of the metrics associated with
your security policies in the Cloud Monitoring dashboard. You can also view suspicious
application traffic patterns from Cloud Armor directly in the Security Command Center
dashboard.
Pre-configured WAF rules: Out-of-the-box rules from the ModSecurity Core Rule
Set to help defend against attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection. RFI, LFI,
and RCE rules are also available in beta. Learn more in our WAF rules guide.
Named IP Lists: Allow or deny traffic through a Cloud Armor security policy
based on a curated Named IP List (beta).
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-26 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThis content discusses Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks within the context of Apigee, specifically excluding Apigee hybrid.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eApigee's architecture utilizes a peering connection between a Google-managed tenant project and a customer-managed Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eCloud Load Balancing offers built-in protections against certain attacks, including using Google's frontend infrastructure and anycast-based load balancing.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Cloud Armor can be added to protect API endpoints, offering features such as IP and geo-based access control, support for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, and pre-configured WAF rules.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eFollowing the "Best Practices for DDoS Protection and Mitigation on Google Cloud Platform" is recommended to mitigate or prevent DoS attacks.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,["# Preventing DoS attacks\n\n*This page\napplies to **Apigee** , but not to **Apigee hybrid**.*\n\n\n*View [Apigee Edge](https://docs.apigee.com/api-platform/get-started/what-apigee-edge) documentation.*\n\nA Denial of Service (DoS) attack is an attempt to render your service or application\nunavailable to your end users. With Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, the\nattackers use multiple resources (often a large number of compromised\nhosts/instances) to orchestrate large scale attacks against targets.\n\nThe Apigee architecture creates a peering connection between two networks: a Google-managed\ntenant project (the *Apigee* ) and a customer-managed project (the\n*Customer VPC* ). To mitigate or prevent DoS attacks on these networks, be sure to follow the\n[Best\nPractices for DDoS Protection and Mitigation on Google Cloud Platform](/static/files/GCPDDoSprotection-04122016.pdf) (PDF).\n\nIf you expose your APIs externally, you can be vulnerable to DoS attacks. To mitigate this,\nCloud Load Balancing includes some built-in protections, including:\n\n- **Protection by Google Frontend infrastructure:** With Cloud Load Balancing, the Google frontend infrastructure terminates user traffic and automatically scales to absorb certain types of attacks (such as SYN floods) before they reach your Compute Engine instances.\n- **Anycast-based Load Balancing:** Cloud Load Balancing enables a single anycast IP to front-end Apigee instances in all regions. Traffic is directed to the closest backend; in the event of a DDoS attack, GCLB increases the surface area to absorb the attack by moving traffic to instances with available capacity in any region where backends are deployed.\n\nIn addition to Cloud Load Balancing, you can add Google Cloud Armor to protect your API endpoints\nagainst DoS and web attacks. Cloud Armor provides benefits such as:\n\n- **IP-based and geo-based access control:** Filter your incoming traffic based on IPv4 and IPv6 addresses or address ranges (CIDRs). Enforce geography-based access controls to allow or deny traffic based on source geo using Google's geoIP mapping.\n- **Support for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments:** Help defend applications from DDoS or web attacks and enforce Layer 7 security policies whether your application is deployed on Google Cloud or in a hybrid or multi-cloud architecture.\n- **Visibility and monitoring:** Easily monitor all of the metrics associated with your security policies in the Cloud Monitoring dashboard. You can also view suspicious application traffic patterns from Cloud Armor directly in the Security Command Center dashboard.\n- **Pre-configured WAF rules:** Out-of-the-box rules from the ModSecurity Core Rule Set to help defend against attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection. RFI, LFI, and RCE rules are also available in beta. Learn more in our WAF rules guide.\n- **Named IP Lists:** Allow or deny traffic through a Cloud Armor security policy based on a curated Named IP List (beta).\n\nFor more information, see [Google Cloud Armor](/armor).\n\n*[VPC]: Virtual Private Cloud"]]
