Cloudflare Apps provide a rapidly expanding marketplace of tools and integrations that can be added to websites and applications in just a few clicks. With over 200+ Apps now available, and adoption growing steadily, they represent a new paradigm for not only boosting website performance, but also improving security.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover what Cloudflare Apps are, their security capabilities, which ones are most beneficial for security teams, adoption trends, and how you can securely leverage them to protect your internet properties.
What Are Cloudflare Apps Exactly?
Cloudflare operates a large global network spanning over 250 cities in 100+ countries, powering websites, APIs, and internet applications. Cloudflare Apps build on top of this infrastructure to provide an app store offering integrations for optimization, security, analytics, social tools, forms, and more.
Instead of installing software directly on your servers, these apps are hosted on Cloudflare data centers close to your visitors. Traffic is processed through Cloudflare‘s network instead of your origin infrastructure.
Some examples of Apps categories:
- Website optimization – caching, images, ads, speed
- Security monitoring – WAF, DDoS, firewalls, bots
- Analytics and insights
- Social media plugins
- Forms and feedback
- eCommerce features
- Gaming enhancements
- Edge computing solutions
There are currently over 200+ apps available, with more added weekly. Adoption has doubled in the past year as businesses and developers recognize the benefits. Many security focused IT teams are now utilizing various Cloudflare Apps to protect properties and gain insights into threats.
Key Benefits of Cloudflare Apps
There are several critical advantages to using Cloudflare Apps instead of traditional plugin based approaches:
Enhanced Security
- Apps isolate threats away from origin so there’s no direct exposure
- Leverage security benefits of Cloudflare like WAF, DDoS mitigation
- No open ports or software risk on origin servers
- Apps still functional even if origin infrastructure is down
Faster Performance
- Apps localized close to visitors for much lower latency
- No added load or strain on application servers
- Native HTTP/3 and QUIC support accelerates delivery
Quick Integration
- No coding, plugins, or custom setup needed
- Intuitive dashboard installation takes just minutes
- Change or remove apps instantly with no residual impact
Reliable Scalability
- Cloudflare network absorbs traffic spikes seamlessly
- Built to handle large enterprise workloads
- Minimal app overhead or throttling concerns
Centralized Management
- Manage multiple sites and applications from one account
- Monitor security events and app analytics in one dashboard
- Updates to apps automatically roll out across your properties
Cloudflare Apps represent the next evolution of a globally distributed cloud network – minimizing infrastructure strain while providing website enhancements with enterprise scale and security.
Evaluating and Integrating Cloudflare Apps
But how exactly do you get started with Cloudflare Apps?
The first step is identifying if a particular app aligns with your website’s goals, has strong security practices, and if the data handling meets your compliance needs.
While most apps are trustworthy, you’ll still want to review their access permissions before integrating. Once validated, we recommend initially testing apps using staging or development environments before full production rollouts.
You’ll also want to configure settings like auto-minification, browser caching, and image optimization rules to fully capitalize on improvements that apps can bring. Properly tuned apps have very minimal overhead while drastically speeding up response times.
Installing Apps takes just two steps:
1. Browse and select your desired Apps in the Cloudflare dashboard. Review permissions and data handling to ensure security policies are followed. You can preview how the app displays before enabling it.
2. Click Install App and the integration will instantly be activated at Cloudflare data centers around the world. Most apps offer generous free tiers. Usage and analytics can be tracked in your dashboard. Apps can be disabled or removed just as easily.
Migrating integrations away from directly touching your infrastructure over to Cloudflare Apps limits attack surfaces, alleviates strain, while still providing website enhancements. Apps also seamlessly scale without dev ops effort as your traffic grows.
Robust Security Capabilities of Cloudflare Apps
In addition to isolating away threats, Cloudflare Apps inherit many other security benefits of Cloudflare’s network:
- DDoS attack mitigation – Absorb and filter out the largest volumetric DDoS attacks targeting any Cloudflare enabled property. malign
- Web application firewall (WAF) – Block SQL injections, cross-site scripting attacks, data exfiltration attempts and more via adaptive DDoS prevention and heuristics.
- Rate limiting – Prevents abusive bots, scrapers and account takeover attempts by limiting traffic.
- Firewall Rules – Set IP, country, agent and other rules to restrict malicious actors.
- Zero-trust model – All traffic is authenticated and monitored for anomalies before reaching origin.
- Logs and analytics – Single view to monitor security events like WAF blocks, suspicious requests etc across your properties.
Cloudflare’s network blocks an average of 72 billion cyber threats per day. Any app you deploy shares these defenses. Apps also support features like 2-factor authentication, role based access, and audit trails for change management.
Case studies reveal Cloudflare security has blocked ransomware, trojans, fraudulent purchases, data extraction attempts and malicious bots – threats that could have reached the origin if apps were directly installed there. Security analytics reveal the geo location of threats as well.
Apps thus mesh nicely with existing cloud perimeter security like ZTNA (zero trust network access) policies by providing another abstraction layer away from direct internet risk exposure.
Top Cloudflare Apps for Security Teams
Here are some of our recommended apps that security architects, website owners, CISOs and DevOps engineers should evaluate first:
Cloudflare Security Level – One click security policy to enable WAF rules, rate limiting etc without complex configuration. Great for SMBs.
Cloudflare Security Analytics – Security visibility across your domain portfolio identifying threats like injections, bots, malware etc attempting to target your sites.
flare Security Week – Curated summary of security incidents and global threats sent to your inbox weekly. Provides proactive insights to keep infrastructure resilient.
GSuite Zero Trust – Eliminate risk of compromised employee Google accounts accessing and extracting sensitive data from SaaS apps.
Cloudflare for Campaigns – Cyber protections optimized for securing political campaigns or election sites from cyber threats, bots, and ransomware attempts.
hCaptcha Enterprise protections – Leverage hCaptcha’s advanced bot and fraud detection tools to stop large scale credential stuffing, inventory hoarding, and content scraping attacks.
Avast Antivirus Scanning – Scan uploaded files in real-time for malware threats like spyware and ransomware using Avast’s industry leading antivirus engine with auto quarantines.
And many others covering firewall management, DDoS protection, intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning and more!
Cloudflare Apps Adoption Trends
Since the introduction of Cloudflare Apps in 2019, adoption has rapidly accelerated as organizations recognize the performance and security benefits:
- 15% of Cloudflare traffic now passes through various App integrations
- Total number of installed Apps has grown 100%+ between 2021 and 2022
- The Apps marketplace inventory has expanded over 3x greater in the past year
- Leading CDN provider BitGravity migrated completely to Cloudflare Apps for security and scale needs
- Many WordPress site owners adopting Apps for security rather than vulnerable plugin options
Integrating tools away from direct internet exposure via Cloudflare Apps architecture has proven more secure, more resilient, easier to manage, and faster for global users.
The Road Ahead
Cloudflare continues innovating quickly with Plans to expand the Apps marketplace across:
- More SMB focused security tools for protecting against phishing, ransomware etc.
- Expanded analytics categories for insights professionals
- More streamlined Discovery and curation for finding relevant Apps
- CMS specific Apps tailored for WordPress, Drupal, Magento sites
- More integrations focused on gaming, IoT, 5G edge computing and streaming
In a world increasingly plagued by sophisticated cyber threats, Cloudflare Apps represent the future of globally distributed security – where applications and services can seamlessly scale while blocking attacks far from infrastructure. Businesses can truly embrace the cloud without compromise by selectively choosing Apps that help achieve compliance, performance and digital experience goals.
