science

Project Shield

Project Shield is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Project Shield rather than just read about it. In short: Project Shield is a free service providing protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. This service is offered by Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google, to websites that have "media, elections, and human rights related content." The main goal of the project is to serve "small, under-resourced news sites that are vulnerable to the web's growing epidemic of DDOS attacks", according to team lead George Co…

Key takeaways

Project Shield belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Project Shield to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Project Shield from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Project Shield is a free service providing protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. This service is offered by Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google, to websites that have "media, elections, and human rights related content." The main goal of the project is to serve "small, under-resourced news sites that are vulnerable to the web's growing epidemic of DDOS attacks", according to team lead George Conard. Google initially announced Project Shield at their Ideas Conference on October 21, 2013. The service was initially only offered to trusted testers, but on February 25, 2016, Google opened up the service to any qualifying website a Google-owned reverse proxy that identifies and filters malicious traffic. In May 2018, Jigsaw announced that it would start offering free protection from distributed denial of service attacks to US political campaigns, candidates, and political action committees. In January 2019, Google's Jigsaw expanded Project Shield to offer free DDoS protection to political organizations and websites in Europe, ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections.

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Project Shield

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Project Shield claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Project Shield before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Project Shield ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Project Shield

In research: Project Shield appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Project Shield in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Project Shield is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics DDoS mitigation companies, Google services, Google stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Project Shield outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Project Shield in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Project Shield means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Project Shield out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Project Shield in simple terms?

Why does Project Shield matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Project Shield?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Project Shield.