Protect your origin server — Free
Your origin server is a physical or virtual machine that is not owned by Cloudflare and hosts your application content (data, webpages, etc.).
Receiving too many requests can be bad for your origin. These requests might increase latency for visitors, incur higher costs — particularly for cloud-based machines — and could knock your application offline.
Select a plan to see how Cloudflare can help you protect your origin:
Secure origin connections
When you secure origin connections, it prevents attackers from discovering and overloading your origin server with requests.
- DNS: Set up proxied (orange-clouded) DNS records and change your domain nameservers , which will also require that you allow Cloudflare IP addresses at your origin.
- SSL:
- To encrypt traffic between Cloudflare and your server, choose Full (strict) SSL/TLS mode (requires server configuration)
- To ensure requests originate from the Cloudflare network, set up authenticated origin pulls .
- Prevent external connections:
- Firewall (moderately secure): Set up a Firewall Rule that only allows traffic from Cloudflare IP addresses.
- Cloudflare Tunnel (very secure): To encrypt all traffic and prevent any inbound connections to your origin, set up a Cloudflare Tunnel .
Monitor origin health
To receive an email when Cloudflare is unable to reach your origin, create a notification for Passive Origin Monitoring.Reduce origin traffic
Block traffic
So long as your traffic is proxied by Cloudflare, Cloudflare automatically protects your application from DDoS attacks.
Additionally, adjust various settings in your Firewall to restrict potentially malicious traffic:
- Set up customized firewall rules
- Enable bot protection
- Block, challenge, or allow specific addresses with IP access rules
- Create rate limiting rules as a final defense against malicious traffic (usage-based billing)