Cloudflare announced that they are offering a Web Application Firewall (WAF) free of charge to subscribers on the free plan. The WAF will provide access to the WAF user interface which comes with a ruleset that can be used to block known threats automatically.
The free managed ruleset has been tested against the Cloudflare network and allows free users to activate their firewall and begin enjoying the benefits of a firewall right away.
Because the ruleset is a managed ruleset, free users will benefit from updates that will protect their sites from new wide ranging security threats.
The free tier of the firewall is especially tuned for protecting WordPress websites as it protects against common WordPress exploits.
Cloudflare WAF
The Cloudflare WAF is an application firewall that monitors incoming web traffic from the Internet to the website and automatically blocks any traffic that it identifies as malicious.
The firewall uses a ruleset which is a set of patterns and signals that it looks for in order to identify malicious traffic and filter it out.
Cloudflare Free Managed Ruleset
The Free Cloudflare WAF comes with a managed ruleset that is designed to block a multitude of common vulnerability attacks.
A managed ruleset consists of pre-configured rules that allows a user to deploy the firewall and have it ready to inspect and block malicious web traffic.
The benefit of a managed ruleset is that the firewall is ready to deploy and with minimal configuration on the part of the user.